The Early November: 'The Mother, The Mechanic, And The Path'

I picked up The Early November's ambitious triple-disc album last year before I started this blog, and so I never really got to express my appreciation of it. Emo usually leaves people with a weird aftertaste, but The Mother, The Mechanic, And The Path is far from it. Each aspect of the album has a very different feel to it, and it makes the album that much more enjoyable overall.


The Mother is the first part of the album, and has a standard emo feel to it with 'Decorations' being the highlight by far. It's got everything that makes it a perfect sampler track and that's why you're gonna see it on the bottom. The Mechanic starts of with this somewhat lo-fi, super mellow track that reminds me of something I've heard by Copeland, but can't put a finger on it. This part of the album finds the band experimenting with more of a pop sound, with 'Driving South' having almost a country feel to it. They've taken a step back from the fast-paced distortion-guitar driven songs to tracks like '1000 Times A Day' which has only three elements: the acoustic guitar and Ace Enders' vocals, and accented by beautiful trumpets at the end.

This brings me to The Path, which I believe is what makes this album truly great. The idea behind this aspect of the album is that the protagonist is talking with his psychiatrist, and every time a certain aspect of his life is revealed, a song related to it takes over. I don't know if any artists have attempted something like this before, but Enders and crew have done an incredible job with this concept disc and like I said, it makes the album worth it. The music itself is primarily softer, but the band is again experimenting with a few different sounds throughout. The story is kind of circular and so there are two renditions of the songs 'Runaway' and 'This Is Love' which really do a great job of tying the music into the storyline. I've heard the entire album several times now, and even though I know the story in and out, I love listening to it over and over again. And the ending makes you wonder where Enders has been all this time!

The 3-disc album is 46 songs, and clocks in a little over 2 hours. You really need to take the time to enjoy it in its entirety, but it helps that it's been broken into 3 distinguishable parts. And the best part is that iTunes offers the album for 10 bucks. Yeah, it's totally worth it. Grab the album and treat your ears to what I think was one of the best albums of last year (most definitely in my top 25).

The Early November - Decoration (The Mother)
The Early November - 1000 Times A Day (The Mechanic)
The Early November - Runaway II (The Path)

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