The Drawing Board, Clear to the Far Side of Way over Yonder

Flashback time, boys and girls: I’m a short, fat, four-eyed, thirteen-year-old kid who still listens to Nirvana and wears flannel. Life is good until some guys from Knoxville decide to light up a few cigarettes with twenty-dollar bills and play some inspired pop-rock about Ursa Major and having the feeling sucked out. It’s the kind of music that the Beatles would have played if they had been influenced by Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. My adventures into power pop have begun. Five years and many bad CDs later, power pop’s slipped to the back of my mind, but it seems I’ve come full circle with The Drawing Board’s debut album, Clear to the Far Side of Way over Yonder.

The boys from Austin-via-L.A. seem to have gotten the formula right: a foundation of keyboards and efficient, to-the-point guitar riffs overlaying crisp vocal harmonies set to that familiar 4/4 time signature. It’s really quite good. Clear to the Far Side of Way over Yonder starts with a spacey, 1950s sock-hop intro with “Clear to the Far Side” before officially starting it off “Something I Can’t Have,” a song that brought a huge smile to the face of this Superdrag fan. Lead singer Justin Tapp’s finds the vocal sweet spot, mixing the right amount of edge without sounding forced and strained while making a few trips into falsetto-land and leaving before he comes off as whiny. The same can be said about “What about Me,” which really could be a blueprint on how to write a great power-pop single. Songs like “It’s a Lie,” a slower acoustic rock song, and “Happy with You” keep you listening by slowing down the speed of the album.

My only complaint with the album is that some of their songs sound too much like someone else — “Opposite of Home” is uncomfortably similar to Elliot Smith, while “Lose my Mind” reminds me too much of the Beatles. This might be an idiotic argument, like complaining my girlfriend looks too much like Jessica Alba, but you really feel that The Drawing Board could embrace the sound and progress it further or scrap it all together and create something new. Again, these are only minor complaints; when it’s all said and done, this isn’t just a great first full-length album, it’s a great album.