If you saw my previous X Ambassadors review then you know that I cannot stand this band. Aside from their song designed to sell Jeeps I despised everything on their first album, VHS. Given all of that, you can imagine how much I was looking forward to ripping into their biggest single off of their upcoming second album. Unfortunately, Ahead of Myself actually isn’t too bad.
The first thing I noticed about this track is Sam Harris’ vocals sound much stronger and overall just better on this track. While Unsteady did showcase a bit of his range, it was in a kind of limp and whiny kind of way. Here Harris presents a pretty powerful and full sounding vocal performance. Unfortunately once you get past the vocals there really isn’t much to the song.
There is a little bit of a guitar and some drums here and there but it’s a very empty sounding mix for the most part. This would seem to signal to me that X Ambassadors saw the success of Unsteady on pop stations and decided to lean more in that direction. Unlike a band like Imagine Dragons who walk the line between Top 40 and Alternative, X Ambassadors are falling firmly into Top 40 territory.
I can’t say I expected anything less from this band as VHS was a mess of boring indie songs trying desperately to sound like something deeper. I’m just about ready to call it on X Ambassadors; a boring and unoriginal band with a hell of a lead singer. Overall this song is just okay, nothing special but not nearly as bad as most of their music.
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