The Fold – Dear Future, Come Get Me

This is it, folks. This is where we get to watch ‘em walk down the aisle, take the diploma, smash a friendly elbow into their arm, pop the cork on the champagne, and say “I told ya so!” with a big, silly grin. Or, for you metaphor-challenged types out there: Consider Dear Future The Fold’s official graduation to the big leagues, proof that they can run with the top dogs, and further proof that this record, just like their last two, should come with a Surgeon General’s warning that listening to Dear Future may be greatly hazardous to your desire to listen to, well, just about anything else.

Okay, so there is an ever-so-slight resemblance to radio darlings like yesteryear’s Plain White Tees and Cartel, but The Fold earn considerable props for pulling off their catchier-than-H1N1 pop/rock without even a hint of the cavity-inducing adorable sweetness that those bands thrive on. Like (former) labelmates Anberlin, The Fold have finally mastered the black art of cramming each lyric and stanza to the gills with hooks, to the point where each song is darn near exploding with mind-numbing sing-along goodness – by the end of the kickoff track “File Under Ground”, even the verse melodies are fortified with 150% of the recommended daily value of catchiness that most bands sitting at this crowded cafeteria table even manage to fit into their choruses – and every other track follows suit as effortlessly as your average hipster fires off pseudo-intellectual self-validating trash-talk about Lady Gaga.

Aside from the sickening level of quality hooks, it’s the Fold’s ever-present knack for integrating subtle traces of genres outside the pop playbook into their songs to let the listener sink their teeth in even deeper, especially when virtually everyone else in their genre seems to be content with Fray-aping cut-and-paste. Cases in point: the electronic loops that set a perfect backdrop for ethereal, delicate female BGV’s in “Head Held High”, the Relient K-esque chipper bounce of “I Know Where I’m Going”, or the half-time E-string guitar crunch on “File Under: Ground” that wouldn’t be out of place as a break on a Rise Against record. Sound odd, given that they probably have more in common with bands like old labelmates and touring buds Classic Crime or Number One Gun than any of the aforementioned bands? Maybe. But it’s little modifications of a style that’s incredibly hard to nail without caving in to either FM-radio dross or purposeful obscurity that keep Dear Future such great fun from the second the needle drops, and you can imagine how many pop-rock records earn that distinction these days. That’s right, you probably only need the fingers on one hand to do it.

Bottom line: Dear Future, Come Get Me blows both This Too Shall Pass and Secrets Keep You Sick out of the water as thoroughly as the Florida Gators crushing an unranked Division III junior college, and is, without a shred of a doubt, The Fold’s finest hour that very well might go down as their definitive album. It’s a true testament to this band’s skill that picking a standout track was the absolute hardest part of reviewing the record, and the fact that they’ve done it all without any sort of label backing them (major, indie, or otherwise) makes Dear Future all the more impressive. This record is as pleasantly surprising as a candy-gram from Jessica Alba. Maybe even better.

Tagged as: Chicago, pop/rock

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