Daybreak, the new album by seminal Jersey pop-punkers, Saves The Day, offers an intriguing and, in places, odd mix of old and new. The end of a three-part series of concept albums, the record effectively represents a point of resolution within the STD canon. Singer and songwriter Chris Conley describes the project: “Sound the Alarm is an expression of discontent. Under the Boards is reflection and remorse. Daybreak is acceptance.” Conley elaborates, saying that, “The whole trilogy was just a bit of a therapeutic experiment. I felt like all twisted up and broken inside and just angry and confused and depressed and sad and I couldn’t really deal with the world or myself. So I was just like this has got to end, I have to at least try and get a grip on the world and on myself. So I dove into the depths of my mind and brought out what I was finding, so the first album was filled with all the anger, the surface pain, and all the paranoid delusional thoughts that were there. The second album, Under The Boards, dealt with how all of that was making my life unbearable, and I realized I had to change so that album was the transitional part, starting to transition out of that dark place, because you realize how it’s affecting your life. So Daybreak is coming to terms with everything and trying to understand why I actually got that way and learning to accept it by exploring what it is and why it was there and simultaneously trying to grow through it and be a better person, not purely full of anger.” Keeping this in mind, one must consider Daybreak as a piece of a larger construction, as opposed to totally conceiving of it as a standalone album.

The title track, also the first on the record, draws the listener back into a story that’s taken five years to finish. It’s an eleven-minute-long opus, transitioning between grooves and feels; divided into five “movements,” it contains a great deal of self-reference, drawing lyrical content from the band’s previous two albums. The first part, “Somehow You Love Me,” sounds almost like a Death Cab For Cutie song, with Conley and a single guitar, decidedly Ben Gibbard-esque. The entrance of the rest of the band creates a more aggressive feel and builds a transition into part II: “Fucked Up Past The Point Of Fixing,” which sounds like a more “traditional” Saves The Day number: driving and aggressive, with Conley singing about his lack of concern at the prospect of dying alone. Abruptly, the song drops all aggression with part III: “8 AM.” This movement is groove-oriented and calm, but builds into the next section, “Zig Zag.” The final part, “Daybreak,” presents the listener with a sense of resolution, more immediate to the song itself than the whole album, but still containing an overall reference point for where we stand within the overall concept of these three albums. If Daybreak were the end of a cable TV series, like those on HBO or Showtime, the title track would be the synopsis of all the past narrative points, provided the audience at the beginning of the show—all the bases are effectively covered, the past is both alluded to and expounded upon, and we begin to get the feeling of conclusion.

The rest of the album proceeds in the same fashion, both elaborating on and wrapping up the story Conley has written about himself. Make no mistake: while there are almost always some doubts as to whether or not a writer is speaking autobiographically through their narrator, be it in song, prose, or poetry, one is absolutely certain that this record and overall concept are entirely based in Conley’s life and feelings.

Moving past the first song, most others on the record are unremarkable, but not in a negative way; they are points of elaboration on Conley’s story. Basically, the record sounds like a Saves The Day album, both musically and lyrically, as well as in terms of production. All the band’s usual musical elements are present, including the expected pop sensibility and Conley’s deft rhythm guitar work—his chord progressions are, more often than not, extremely creative variations on common pop progressions. Again, the qualification of these songs as “unremarkable” isn’t a negative thing; few songs on the record truly stand out amongst the others, lyrically or musically, but it seems like that’s the point with an album like this. As the conclusion of a three-part concept, a grand project by the creative force behind the band, this record moves as one piece, one point with many moving parts. Of course, there are some points of note as far as what does actually stand out. For example, towards the end of the album lie, “O” and “Undress Me” are two incredibly dynamic, moving, truly passionate songs, and because they fall at the end of the record, the mood and lyrical content of the songs are crucial to the resolution of the overarching, three-album story.

It almost seems like one has to appreciate Daybreak and the rest of Conley’s releases with his primary project not for their technical qualities, be they musical or lyrical, but as pieces of consummate and skillful songwriting. While Chris Conley is by all means a terrific musician, he presents himself in a different light with records like these, because they are so narrative, so autobiographical. He appears to be an artist in a more classical sense, because his songs aren’t just about the music or the lyrics, but are an overall cohesive expression of who he is as a person, where he feels he stands, both in respect to himself and those around him. That, it would seem, is why we are so drawn to Saves The Day, to begin with—because there is so much vulnerability, so much meaning in Conley’s work.

★★★.5/★★★★★

*This review was composed by Paul Adler