Justin Levinson & the Valcours put out the new album titled ‘This Side of Me, This Side of You’ that consists of 10 indie pop songs. Out of the 10 songs, there are 3 songs that feature other singers like Gergory Douglass, Liz Longley, and Will Dailey. There’s a mellow beat going on with the songs, not so much where it’s rhythm will make you sleepy, but I wasn’t getting in the mood to dance or move anything other than my foot. This is what I didn’t like the most about the album, is that though there’s a good sound to the songs, the rhythms have no emotion to them. There’s nothing in the songs that made me want to do anything at all. I didn’t want to sing along, I don’t think I could dance to any of them unless it’s something where I’m just standing in a corner doing the I’m not bored I’m listening to the music head bob. At best there’s a few times that the beats pick up where I could tap my foot to the song but that would be it.

Second thing I didn’t like was that Justin Levinson at times has a very whiney sound to his vocals. With one song there’s a lyric in it that says he would like to start a fight but with the way his vocals sound it’s more likely he wants to sit at a table whining about how he was treated wrong. He might sound whiney, Justin Levinson can hold a high pitched note. This could be contributed to his whiney sound, or maybe his whiney sound is due to the fact that he can do the high pitched notes. In either case, it just didn’t strike the right chord for me to like the sound of his lyrics.

Now aside from those two downers to the songs, I did like the fact that the songs are stories. I know the majority of songs are trying to have a meaning to them but having a meaning or point is different than telling a story. I can make the point that gravity pushes down on everything but telling the story of how the theory of gravity was developed is different. This is what the songs on ‘This Side of Me, This Side of You’ does, tells a story. If the songs had a little more energy behind them, I would have really enjoyed listening to the songs. At times he has used background noise to the songs, which at first I didn’t like but on a second listen to the songs I enjoyed how there was that background noise. But again, everything came down to there not being enough energy to the songs and the whiney sound of the vocals that has kept me from fully liking this album.