Ace Enders & A Million Different People – When I Hit The Ground
Bands that come to mind when I think of New Jersey: Thursday, Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start, and Skies on Fire.
People that come to mind when I think of New Jersey: Gregory House, The Boss, Eddie Cuddy and Carla Fernandez.
Nowhere in this equation is Arthur “Ace” Enders and his many facades. In this new case, Ace Enders & A Million Different People. A person and a band that actually has a reason to exist in the heartless world of today’s music.
Let me preface this review with a trip in time. In 2000/2001 I heard about The Early November, and I believe I ended up seeing them open for someone. I hated them. During this time, Dashboard Confessional were touring with the demos to A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar, Hot Rod Circuit was still a band, airports were easier to get through, hardcore-influenced music was beginning it’s rise and pop punk was becoming not-so-pop punk. Terms like “emo” were replacing the high school stereotype of “goth” and people were trading in their studded belts and neck bracelets for Chuck Taylors and thick rimmed glasses (prescription or not). At this time, I LOVED Dashboard, Further Seems Forever was my favorite band, and I was in a shitty band named In Absence.
Fast forward a few years to 2004: hardcore music has influenced every “hard” genre of music with less than musical breakdowns and band names like “I Wrote Haikus About Cannibalism In Your Yearbook”. Thursday was riding out the last of their War All the Time support tour, Bane was in the studio recording their CD The Note and Mr. Enders came out with I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody’s Business. I had no idea this was Ace Enders from TEN, but it was again horrid. Of course, my favorite bands at this point were Say Anything, Bane, and Straylight Run, and my favorite shirt was from Fullbleed.org. Oh yeah, I’ve probably beaten every single Emo Game version at least 10 times by this point.
A year later: TEN releases the year-long venture called The Mother, the Mechanic, and the Path, a triple disc rock concept album that sucked two hours of your life out of you if you wanted to hear what this one band had to offer in every sense of the word “music”. Most impressive, but again… for me… not thrilling. I was still getting over the fact I’d never see The Get Up Kids live again (turns out that was a fallacy) and the last multi-disc CD I bought I didn’t like that much (funny enough, it was The New Amsterdams – Killed or Cured).
At this point in time, I’ve never listened to Secret Wars, Ace’s first “Ace Enders” album. Mainly because I didn’t like anything up to that point, so what would change my mind?
Funny enough, When I Hit The Ground changed my mind. This record is no less than great. One of the reasons I never liked any of his projects before was the mediocre voice. It wasn’t necessarily smashing, and it was a little brash for the music I liked listening to. Keeping in mind that the last Ace project I listened to was the triple-threat of The Mechanic… This new album was the triple-threat CD I wish he would have released years ago. I believe this CD blends together the soft singer/songwriter side of Enders’ music as well as the menacing, hard progressions he also likes to capture with a band and an electric guitar. The vocals actually work with the music fairly well, and that is definitely shown in the lead track of the album.
There aren’t many dead tracks, or filler tracks, on this record. Most can stand alone fairly strong, and they all support each other very well on top of that. This album is probably a great “studying” album if you wanted a mix but didn’t want to really change the band. To draw comparisions, this is the CD I wish Straylight Run would come out with.
Along with that last statement, this CD stands up with recent releases from Jack’s Mannequin and Matt Pryor. If Ace Enders & AMDP were to tour with two other bands, I’d probably choose Jack’s Mannequin because of the similar styles, and Kevin Devine because of singer-songwriter concept. Like Devine, Enders mixes band play with solo play on his CD, with more emphasis on the band than on the acoustic solo stuff.
The CD, overall, is great. It’s exactly what the Spring Semester would sound like this year in song. If you haven’t watched the video above, go ahead and do that. If you do like the song, get the CD. And if you like the CD, he’s on tour from March 25th to The Bamboozle, going from the west coast to the east coast.
Excellent review nick. I agree with you for the most part. The only separation we have is i thoroughly enjoyed icanmakeamesslikenobodysbusiness and the last disc of “the mother, the mechanic, and the path”. I was personally caught off guard by how good this cd is. I expected Ace’s signature timid, almost cracking vocals but instead got a powerful performance. The opening track does an unbelievable job of drawing you into the album.