“The Room’s Too Cold” by The Early November is one of my all-time favorite albums. I love it so much that I decided to write a track-by-track review of it. It originated as a response to someone in a message board with whom I was debating music.
“The Room’s Too Cold”
1. Ever So Sweet: Do I even need to explain this track? The acoustic guitar sparkles with a sort of raw, organic, unplugged honesty that you can tell came straight from the likes of Ace’s teenage bedroom. Soon into the track, a string duet (approximately) kicks in with a warm, unsynthesized tone that is reminiscent of everyone’s favorite film soundtrack about love and loss, but with a hint of imperfection. Subliminally, the imperfection reminds us of home and everything related to our own lives. Ace’s voice echoes the same imperfection as he sings with his heart and not his vocal cords. The notes aren’t perfect, and it’s better that way. They don’t need to be. WE are not perfect. NO ONE is. The song ends with a crescendo-rewind of pitch-shifted guitar feedback and a flanger-laden cacophony of what has just played, prepping us perfectly for the face-melting chorus of the next track, which flows seamlessly into one another.
2. Something That Produces Results: The song starts with blazing guitars as raw as anyone’s ever heard at the time. The Early November features the typical Gibson duet that everyone else uses, but with that extra grit and unprocessed static that other bands of the genre had overbaked until it sounded too polished. Chris Badami and The Early November left the guitars this way purposely. It was a choice. The simple minor-key transitions of the rhythm guitar and the meaty grit-picking of Mr. Anello in this song make it a sea of organized noise. The chorus and verse hit again, soon followed by an extremely clever change in time-signature during the breakdown that pans from left to right speaker from Ace’s riff to Joe’s. The band says “to hell with traditional time signatures” during this bridge before seamlessly flowing right back into the face-melter of a chorus and bright vocal harmonies.
3. A Mountain Range in My Living Room: I’m not sure what the exact effect(s) that Joe puts on his guitar during the verses of this song, but it’s something combined with delay. Either way, it sparkles and provides a signature icing on the verses of this song. The chorus showcases the same gritty, raw guitar that we’ve seen previously, but this one’s a little different. The lyrics all of the sudden hit us in the face with relatability. “It’s never been harder to fall, there’s nothing to grab and that’s all I want to hold onto. Just another sweep and it’ll be fine, but this carpet’s got hills and I can’t see this helping at all.” If you haven’t been able to relate to those lyrics in your lifetime, then you sir, are a robot. Every time we fall, we can’t think of a time that’s been harder because we’re caught up in the here and now. You feel helpless, as if this time, you can’t see yourself getting over it. The carpet’s got hills and you can’t see anything helping your cause. Coming up next in the song is a true emotional attention-getter and one of the prime examples that I use the word “nostalgic” in the overall description of this album. The Early November was the first band that I heard at the time (not to say they were the only band, but the first I had heard) that ever did this: the bridge slows down considerably and drops into a minimalist progression, using only one bass note, leaving ample silent space for self-reflection. This space was left for us to reflect on ourselves and collect our thoughts. All the while, TEN leaves us aural cues that invoke a strong nostalgic response in ourselves, with field recordings of children talking and playing in the background, while juxtaposed with mini-interviews of people just like us. The organic texture of these recordings, combined with the sound of everyone’s childhood, has an extremely profound effect. The only thing that TEN ever did wrong was NOT play these recordings during their live performances of this song. The juxtaposition of grown and young voices implies the process of growing up. It then all comes together: the song is about the woes of growing up. Relatable? To say the least. In the very last field recording, Michael C. claims that his goal in life is to make sure that everyone else is having a good time, setting up a perfect mood-transition to the next track.
4. Sesame, Smeshame: By listening to just the first few guitar chords of this song, you know it’s going to be more upbeat, possibly a dance tune. The first lines of the song, “We find our way through this”, offers an optimistic sequel to Mountain Range, saying that, if we just stick together through the bullshit of this life, we might just get through this. “Come in, we’re all inside of nothing, the place where we live our lives… We ain’t got nothin’ to lose…” Ace had his eyes open to the world that we all live in. He saw the matrix. It takes an intelligent person to see through all the bullshit that is thrown at us every day. This song is about surrounding ourselves with people who understand us in that way. Another slower instrumental bridge appears in this song, shortly followed by gang-vocals, further enhancing the social group aspect that is apparent in the message of this song. The remainder of the song is just that good old fashioned guitarscape that leads to that strong ending that TEN is famous for.
5. Baby Blue: And here comes our dance tune. It’s a song about losing someone close to you. It has a hint of sarcasm, a splash of “fuck you”; the very thing that we needed after listening to the last few songs on the record. It’s that punk rebellion that got them on Drive Thru in the first place. The song switches from a dancy off-beat to a more traditional 4/4 time signature, and back again. It’s a choppy song, which reflects the context under which the lyrics were written. The last half of the song is what draws me in the most. The short bridge is a tribute of sorts to the Get Up Kids that happened to fit perfectly with the subject matter of the song. “I don’t want you to love me anymore!” From then until the last main chord rings out, the song is a great guitarscape of structured rhythm guitar and some chaotic high lead. The ending chords are followed by a complete change in key with just one open guitar chord. Very uncharacteristic of bands in this genre at the time. The outro of this track is beautiful. Very minimalist with uses of some sort of xylophone-ish instrument, distanced drums, and dissonant lead guitar that causes flashbacks to the end of “We Write the Wrong”. The spatialness of this technique was something I never heard from anyone else within the general genre, no matter how hard I searched. It was almost as if they utilized some of the low-fi and disjointed principles of Ambient music in sections such as this. Not creative? If you still don’t think so, you must not really know what creativity is.
6. The Course of Human Life: The first 35 seconds of the track feature a guitar riff as nostalgic as a broken record (in the most positive sense). It is quickly broken by a wall of minor-key rock chords and descending drum patterns that leave your head sinking with each descent by Mr. Kummer. It sucks you in, eats you up. What I like most about this song is the fact that the raw guitar seems to blend together in this non-traditional chord progression. The chord changes aren’t as distinct, and I think that’s appealing. The majority of the song is played in a kind of off-tone that makes it sort of different from the rest of the songs. I think this song may have been Ace’s little lyrical personal comment about him and the rest of the band. “Out of everyone everywhere, we can say we found our own way.” It really speaks of the beginnings of The Early November and their pending success.
7. Dinner at the Money Table: Ahhh, yes. A break from the grit of the electric guitar and back to the acoustic. We are quickly reminded of Ever So Sweet. The same nostalgic, imperfectly-tuned string group (I can’t decide if it’s a quartet or a trio) shows up again, giving the same comfortable, warm feeling that Ever So Sweet gave. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many traditional alternative/punk bands used pizzicato strings in their song, as The Early November does in this song, very slightly. It eases your nerves to get ready for the following track. This song can be thought of as sort of the calm before the storm. It is more light-hearted. If you haven’t noticed by now, this album was arranged in such a way to provide a sort of emotional rollercoaster. This is one of the flat parts right before you plunge off of a huge 100-foot cliff.
8. Exchanging Two-Hundred: This song has been my favorite piece on the album for some time… which is kind of weird because I haven’t heard anyone else say the same thing. This song just strikes a really deep chord in me. Usually, I’m not a person that listens to music for solely lyrical content, but this song appeals to me on so many different levels; lyrically and instrumentally. It starts off on the slow side, describing a day when nobody’s around, metaphorically; because everyone’s there, but you FEEL as if no one’s around. To me, it describes how hard it is to relate to people; a struggle I’ve been dealing with since high school. It’s about being lonely. This song is a work of melancholy; the personal portrayal of a human emotion. This song, out of all the songs on this album, lets me see into Ace’s heart and his mind, and feel what he was feeling. That’s huge for me. I don’t necessarily look for songs that I can relate to lyrically… I look for songs that I can relate to emotionally. It has nothing to do with words. It has everything to do with the feeling you get when you listen to something. Instrumentally, the song builds so nicely from a steady verse, creating the setting for what Ace is trying to say. As Joe’s guitar feedback kicks in and out, the verse transitions into a heart-melting (forgive the use of the cliche) chorus. Ace no longer whispers, he practically screams it at the top of his lungs. Every time I hear the chorus, I can’t help but close my eyes and let the song wash over me. This song makes me absolutely weak. That hard guitar riff that defines this song (you should know which one I’m talking about) that just consists of two brilliantly-placed notes makes this song extremely powerful. At the end of the song, we hear a section of the song that probably wasn’t meant to be thought of critically, but it really makes such an excellent transitional segment. This album seems to have several instrumental transitions that are so creative, different, haunting. This one in particular really adds some spectacular atmosphere to the album as a whole, featuring a creepy organ playing a carnival-type riff that goes so nicely at the end of this epic piece of human emotion. Combined with guitar feedback and dissonant organ rolls, some kind of static “noise” blankets the stereo field, panning from ear to ear, adding some texture to the song that I didn’t hear again until I got into Ambient music. Such a beautiful and otherworldly element to the song. I can’t get enough of Exchanging Two-Hundred.
9. My Sleep Pattern Changed: This track always makes me laugh because I think I remember at one point, Jeff saying that this is the “track that no one fucking likes.” It’s quite a simple track. I don’t think it’s a bad track by any means though. It just doesn’t stretch the limits of creativity as the rest of the tracks on The Room’s Too Cold do. Traditional use of drums/shaker, simple lead guitar riff, even simpler rhythm guitar riff. Vocal patterns are easy and on-beat. There’s nothing WRONG with this track, perse. It serves as more of a bridge between Exchanging Two-Hundred and Fluxy, transitioning between that somber mood to more of the upbeat mood that Fluxy has to offer.
10. Fluxy: This track reminds me of Baby Blue. It’s an upbeat punk-rock anthem (the guest vocals by Kenny Vasoli of The Starting Line makes this pretty obvious). This song is just a great rockin’ out song. It hits you in the face with a bare fist, but maintains that aural aesthetic that they’ve kept throughout each one of their songs that almost allows you to picture the band practicing at Ace’s parents’ house in their early days. That feeling of home comes through for me (I don’t know about anyone else). This song is kind of an offshoot to some of the stuff from For All of This, I think, namely Every Night’s Another Story, I Want To Hear You Sad, and All We Ever Needed, just with better audio engineering (as far as instrument separation, drum clarity, etc. goes). I wish there was more I could say about this track, but what can I say? It’s a punk rock anthem. You just gotta appreciate this song for that fact and enjoy it for what it is.
11. Everything’s Too Cold….But You’re So Hot: This song might be one of the best ending-songs I’ve ever heard. The guitar riff on the first part of the song is very simple, but it is backed by some of the most nostalgic, melancholy strings I’ve ever heard. They sound as if they have been extracted from a 1920’s film soundtrack. They are a little grainy and they oscillate in and out of tune. It takes some serious understanding of music and not to mention, some balls, to purposely make one of your instruments even the slightest bit out of tune. The detuned nature of the first half of this song is backed by Serg’s bass that keeps the song on track. The song marches slowly and sort of dissonantly on until it rests momentarily at 4 minutes in, where it starts a guitar and bass drum crescendo to where you could swear it would kick in with loud guitar and vocals… but it doesn’t. If it DID climax after a crescendo like that, it would be expected and cliche. But it doesn’t. Instead, the music dives into complete silence. A moment of tension is broken by that familiar verse again, but we soon realize that this time it’s different. An electric guitar, or maybe even two of them, begins to feedback and offset the overall tune… here comes our crescendo. Sure enough, Ace voice explodes into the scene of chaotic lead guitar tapping and distorted guitar noise: “SO QUICK, YOU KNOW I ALWAYS FORGET!” His vocal chords are bleeding and he lets you know it. So often do other bands radiofy their songs so that more people will like it. In The Room’s Too Cold, Ace said “fuck that.” He let it fly; put his blood and guts out on the table for everyone to see. That’s what makes this album better than the rest. That’s what, if nothing else, should make this record stand out among every other one. To this day, I know very few records that showcase such a raw display of emotion as The Room’s Too Cold does. And the other ones that do don’t even have words. The Early November put their hearts into their music; a feat that many claim, but most fail.
