AMG Review of Mending

Stewart Mason
All Music Guide

The debut full-length by the New Frontiers single-handedly does much to reclaim the better aspects of the term "emo" from the rafts of soundalike eyelinered mall punk bands who have watered down its usefulness as a genre description. As melancholy but oddly appealing as a middle-American version of post-Coldplay U.K. mope-pop acts like Keane or Doves, the New Frontiers' musical focus throughout Mending is on pretty, melodic, low-key songs with just a hint of a country influence in the occasional fiddle or pedal steel part. (Think Cursive or Low, not Wilco.) Singer/songwriter Nathan Pettijohn's hushed, intimate vocals are the primary focal point of every song, bringing an engaging warmth to his fairly plain-spoken, medium-angsty lyrics. The album is front-loaded with a pair of early winners, "Black Lungs" and "Man Down," that bring a stronger measure of passion and kinetic energy than the rest of the album's 11 songs. But while it's a bit of a shame that the rest of the album keeps the tempos slow and the emotions at a bare simmer instead of mixing the moods a bit more, songs like "Mirrors" and the sparse, acoustic "Spirit and Skin" are solid enough to keep Mending from sounding too samey.