Album Review: Vanna - 'The Few And The Far Between'

The revolving door of members which is Vanna have managed to maintain regular releases despite the issues they have with keeping a consistent line-up. That being said, if you mention the band name these days most people will say something like "I only really liked 'Curses'" (the band's first record). This may be because when that album came out, post-hardcore was the music to be listening to, and the band produced it well, but as time rolled on, music changed and Vanna didn't.

This is where the band's fifth album 'The Few And The Far Between' will present a divide, for if you love standard post-hardcore, you will love this record, if you want something more, Vanna are not your band. The guys have tried, at least on this album, to change things up slightly, like with the album opener and title track, which is a short reverberated drum line driven by feedback and catchy gritty vocals. But even this, which is a slight progression for Vanna, is nothing new in the genre. If anything it's quite a cliché way to open an album of this style these days.

The lyrics will give you the most reasons to cringe despite the fact that their delivery is one of the highlights of the record, the exception of course being the extremely overused dirty verse/clean chorus method as in the single 'Year Of The Rat'. Vanna don't really leave very long to make an impression on this album with an average of two minutes on each song and a severe lack of tonal diversity. They are at their best when they are at their heaviest, like with 'I Said I'm Fine', a thrashy punk song, which is ruined by its Limp Bizkit-esque breakdown, but otherwise is a burst of attitude and aggression that lights a bit of a fire.

The other moments, like 'The Weekly Slap In The Face' offer brief moments of chaos and power that will raise hopes, only to kill the energy with a clean section or poorly executed breakdown which seems to undo all of the hard work at the beginning of the song. The idea of a hardcore ballad is lost on 'Please Stay' before the album ends with some big rock riffs in 'When In Roam' and a bunch of sounds that you will have heard too much of already in 'His Heels' despite the relatively short amount of music before it.

Vanna are kinda like the dudes who partied really hard when the party started, and are still trying to keep everyone in that fun drunken state at five in the morning when everyone else is clearly over it. Post-Hardcore has, or at least needs to, evolve past this.

1. The Few And Far Between

2. The Lost Art Of Staying Alive

3. Year Of The Rat

4. I Said I'm Fine

5. Casket Rhythm

6. The Weekly Slap In The Face

7. Please Stay

8. A Thin Place

9. The Dreamer_The Thief_The Relic

10. When In Roam

11. His Heels