Artist Amber Pacific
Album The Possibility and the Promise
Released 2005
Label Hopeless Records
Seattle-based Amber Pacific formed in 2002 while the guys were still juniors in high school. Hopeless Records signed them and they made their debut in May 2004 with the Fading Days EP.
Before Hopeless Records picked up Amber Pacific (whose moniker evokes their native Washington) last year, the band had landed few high-profile gigs, their music shadowed by a densely talented Seattle music scene. They had performed a series of live shows locally and recorded a few songs in anticipation of a possible limited release EP. Then, very quickly, their luck changed. Martin Feveyear, who had produced a few songs for the band, helped the boys shop their music to Hopeless, who agreed to sign them and issue their Fading Days EP.
By the time of its release, Fading Days had helped secure the band a slot on the Vans Warped Tour. Now, with the release of their full-length project The Possibility and the Promise, AP is getting more attention than they would have expected a little over a year ago. Feveyear is again at the controls and the band is amid their second Warped Tour ‚Äì this time with a catalogue of songs that include “Poetically Pathetic,” “The Right to Write Me Off,” and their recent single “Gone So Young.”
The album’s opening track “Everything We Were Has Become What We Are” is a spot on introduction to the rest of the album, with its beats and melodies drawing heavily on 90s punk bands like Pennywise and Blink 182, whose sounds predate the newer pop-punk incarnations like New Found Glory, Good Charlotte, and others that have since crowded the streaming audiowaves.
In fact, it’s easy to locate the influence of AP’s contemporaries – Yellowcard, Switchfoot, and Jimmy Eat World, to name a few others – on TP&TP. AP is still mimicking other bands, still nesting under the safety of their influences, and still timid about making music that is a little too honest or a little too dark – their overproduced album cleans up in places where some rough edges would have added character, depth, and individuality.
Instead, the band trades their rough edges for a latent optimism that masquerades as minor-key melancholy. That optimism takes the form of a vague spirituality in songs like “Gone So Young”: “Wherever you go / I will be waiting / Whenever you call / I will be there / Whatever it takes / I’ll make your darkest days so bright / I’m in your heart tonight.” But their spirituality is neither unique, nor is it deviant ‚Äì bands like Switchfoot and MxPx offer similarly vague allusions to love and devotion that are ambiguous enough to appeal to both mass and niche audiences. And the band’s mass appeal is on the rise, despite their derivative sound. Because the truth is that, while their music is simple and derivative, their driving beats and catchy hooks make AP a guilty pleasure.
Both the Fading Days EP and The Possibility and the Promise are available now online and in stores. Plus, the 2004 Warped Tour Compilation includes a live version of AP’s “Thoughts Before Me,” the EA game Burnout 3: Takedown includes AP’s “Always You,” and AP performs a cover of “Video Killed The Radio Star” for a Fearless Records compilation album.
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