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Park Breaks Up

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Park has decided to call it a day. You can read a message from the band below.

Dear fans and friends,

During the course of the past months my priorities concerning Park, have changed due to personal affairs in my life. These changes have lead me to ultimately quit the band. It is a decision that I have been pining over for quite some time now, as I did not want to make a rash choice. For the past ten years being in Park is all I have known, and leaving that is scary, yet I wouldnâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢t trade that time for anything else in the world. The friends we have made, places weâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢ve been, floors weâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢ve slept on, and shows we have played are unimaginable. It is much more than I ever thought we would accomplish.

I would like to thank everyone at Lobster Records and Arsenal Management, for taking a chance on us, former band mates, our fans, friends, and relatives who supported us through the last decade. Thereâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s no way we could have ever have accomplished what we did without you. Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢m not going to name all of you because the list would be way to long and I would be afraid of leaving someone out, but Iâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢m sure you all know who you are. You have given us the greatest gift a musician could ever receive. You believed in us.

Park
Ladd Mitchell
Miles Logan
Alex Haycraft
Aaron Bickel
Justin Valenti
Jansen Lee
Gabe Looker
Timmy Costello
John Heupel
Eric Lipe
Keith Voguele

We will be playing a final show to support our fans sometime before June. This show will be posted as soon as we know the date. If anyone wishes to leave comments or has any other questions concerning the finer details of the breakup would you please please please send them to my personal myspace account and I would be more than happy to talk with you about them.

Thank you very much,

Ladd Mitchell

Park – Building a Better ______

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Park

Artist: Park
Album: Building a Better _____
Label: Lobster
Purchase: Smart Punk
Release Date: July 25, 2006

Overall: 8.3
Music: 7.9
Lyrics: 8.9
Production: 7.9

I’ve been a fan of Park’s dark pop since I got my hands on their 2001 release, No Signal. But as the tracks of this album cycled through and I hit those from their first full-length on my iTunes, it was hard to tell that the albums had changed. I only realized that Building a Better ______ had ended because I knew the words to the first track of No Signal and therefore knew that it was no longer just the deja entendu feeling but rather that I’d experienced at the start of the new disc. So? Yes, the band has a signature sound, and I happen to quite enjoy it. On the surface this makes it difficult to see that they’ve built a better Park and a better album. But on a second listen, you can hear the band’s more precise and deliberate timing and can tell that they’ve opted for a mellower sound. The layering of guitar riffs and rhythms is one of the band’s most interesting contributions to the powerchord-driven emo genre; powerchords have their place in contemporary pop and rock music, and these guys make use of them but do not rely on them. Lyrics are another strongpoint; though they convey typical emo angst, they do so with a poetry that is, for the most part, not trite.

Valida’s Editorial Point: Too often within the emo genre, I hear lyrics that are transparent – instead of hearing the struggle faced by the artist in the situation he/she is describing, I hear the struggle faced by the artist when he/she was trying to scribble out his/her thoughts poetically. I can see the artist opening up the thesaurus looking for a new, obscure word for “leave” or “broken”. These lyrics, to me, have in the writing process lost the feeling that drove them out of the artist’s head in the first place.

Tracklisting:
1. The Trophy Wife
2. Mississippi Burning
3. Who Is Aliandra
4. Angels And Errors
5. A Message
6. Chica Chica
7. La Amoureux
8. Irukandji
9. Intro
10. Hide And Seek
(11.) A Message (Hidden Track)