The Promise Ring Album: “The Horse Latitudes”

This album contains Saturday...possibly a tribute to Sunny Day Real Estate's "Friday"...but regardless an emotional flood of guitar buildups and floating seaprated chords. Also E Texas Ave is an assault of detached lyrics and power chords that rip through the speakers. The short tacets are unbelievably powerful. This album would be worth the price even if only those two songs were on it, but there is a more polished version of picture postcard, scenes from parisian life(which was amazing when they played it at summerfest, and great here too) a couple poppy songs that are not mediocre but do not standout in my mind as much as the others, and a fun brassy swing-feeling song about the russians that seems to indicate the direction the career would go. Very Very Very Very Good

E. Texas Ave. is quite possible one of Promise Ring's best songs. Overall this cd is one of my favorite emo albums. As far as Promise Ring goes all of their music is killer, but the next best is 30 Degrees Everywhere.....if you dig poppy emo, singing about playing football, wearing your favorite boyhood t-shirt, or songs that contain the most catchy choruses....this is for you!

This is a good little compilation of older Promise Ring songs that are really similar sounding to the first 30 Degrees Everywhere album(it even includes one song from the album which happens to be one of the best from it). I love the song titles...two of them use smaller towns in Wisconsin as their names. "Watertown Plank" and "Mineral Point".

Watertown Plank-7/10 Awesome song title...includes some cool strange lyrics early Promise Ring is famous for. But they're a bit strange in this song.

Mineral Point-9/10 Another cool song title. Good mellow song which borrows a part of "My Firetower Flame" from the first album. I think that's cool...a companion piece I guess.

a Picture Postcard-10/10 Great classic song from the first album...I can't tell if it's a different version or not. "Couldn't you take the second bus home. Couldn't you just take me with you? I'm convinced that you're from Mars."

Saturday-10/10 This song is awesome...mellow with great lyrics and has a few breakdowns. I think it's the best song on the album, the reviewer before me likes it too so I'm not crazy.

Scenes from Parisian Life-7/10 decent lyrics, but it's kind of filler...It runs about a minute. Filler is good though sometimes and this is one of those times.

E. Texas Ave.-7/10 A real Promise Ring rocker. One of the heaviest Promise Ring songs.

Miete-8/10 The guitar parts are a form of hypnosis, I swear. Not too bad...it's actually quite cool, runs over five minutes though with the same few lines. It works out though.

I Never Trusted the Russians-9/10 Awesome song title, weird lyrics...but that doesn't matter this song is catchy. Features horns and catchy music...great closer.

this cd is just awesome all around. by far the best promise ring release there is - especially better than their new cd which sucks. the only reason it didn't get 5 stars was because it was too short. a cd this great should go on forever.

The Promise Ring are the best Emo-pop band out there. I can't resist coming home every day to listen to this great CD.