Sherwood, A Different Light

Try as I might, I can’t dislike these guys. I’ve gotten a little tired of this whole style lately, just because it seems like every other damn disc I pick up does this same kind of Jimmy Eat World-style emo-pop — impassioned, sensitive-guy vocals, crystalline harmonies, and roaring rawk (but not too raw) guitars. And yeah, the operative word here is “pop,” for sure; heck, “Alive” even milks the bassline from “Stand by Me,” for crying out loud. The lyrics are sincere, the voices are sweet, the arrangements are impeccable — at its heart, A Different Light is just a flat-out well-done pop album, all gorgeous melody and swooning guitars.

And trust me, I know how bad this stuff can be — even the sweetest, prettiest emo-pop stuff out there can get cloying in a hurry, and listening to some of it when I’m in a bad mood can make me grumpy and antisocial enough to want to go out and steal candy from toddlers or something. With Sherwood, though, I get the opposite effect; when I first put the CD on I felt sick and tired and worn-out, secretly hoping to make myself feel a little better by tearing into some hapless band of wannabe emo kids who sound less like Sunny Day and more like Gin Blossoms (and yep, that fits), but dang it, listening to this album makes me happy.

Seriously, tracks like “Song in My Head,” “Middle of the Night,” or “The Only Song” make the sun outside the big glass windows seem brighter, the clouds seem less oppressive off in the distance. It makes me feel that teeniest bit, well, innocent again, like when I was a kid and didn’t have to worry about mortgages and busted sewage lines and massacres and rapists. Which is funny, because beneath the Jimmy Eat World-isms I’d swear I can hear a whole heck of a lot of mid-’80s pop, bands like The Outfield (esp. on “Middle of the Night”), The Call, Glass Tiger, Big Country, or The Church. Beyond the pure pop melodies Sherwood shares with those bands, they also had a sense of wide-eyed wonder, back before the whole world got jaded and cynical and you could still sing a song about being in love without making it self-referential and ironic.

Come to think of it, that’s really a shame. How sad and boring have we all gotten when we all snicker in unison at a well-written, poppy, heart-on-a-sleeve love song? Have we really become a nation of self-hating hipsters? Catch me on a more cynical day, and I’d probably swear we already were, just a nation of critics ready and willing to snipe at anybody we can (and don’t worry, I get that I’m feeding The Beast by doing my little critic thing, too). Today, though, after spinning A Different Light for most of the afternoon, I don’t really give a shit. I just want to get out of this building and out into sunlight, to slap the CD into the car stereo and head the heck on home with a grin on my face.