Burning the Days

Burning the Days is the fifth studio album from the band Vertical Horizon, released on September 22, 2009.

Burning the Days
Studio album by
Vertical Horizon
ReleasedSeptember 22, 2009
RecordedLos Angeles, California[1]
GenreAlternative rock
Length51:24
LabelOutfall Records
ProducerMatt Scannell
Vertical Horizon chronology
Go
(2003)		 Burning the Days
(2009)		 Echoes From the Underground
(2013)
Singles from Vertical Horizon
  1. "Save Me from Myself"
    Released: 2009
  2. "The Lucky One"
    Released: 2010

Background

Following the multi-platinum success of their 1999 album, Everything You Want, the members of Vertical Horizon were disappointed with what they felt was a lack of support from RCA in promoting their 2003 follow up, Go.[2] Go failed to gain any real support from RCA, but despite the label's lack of interest in Go, Vertical Horizon had difficulty getting released from its contract.[3][4] Despite setbacks, the group and label severed their relationship when RCA merged with Sony Music in 2004, after which Vertical Horizon signed with Hybrid Recordings, where Go was re-released as Go 2.0 in 2005.[5]

Shortly after the release of Go 2.0, longtime drummer Ed Toth announced he was leaving Vertical Horizon to join The Doobie Brothers.[5]

Recording

After an extended hiatus, work began on Burning the Days in 2007.[3][6] Scannell took a different approach to the record by working at his home studio, and created his own label, Outfall Records, to release Burning the Days on.[3] Though free of any external pressures, Scannell felt the need to be cautious with the recording: "You have the freedom to be a little creative when you're not working against the clock, but at the same time you can be a little too lenient, and spending an awful lot of time."[3]

Scannell also worked with outside musicians while writing and recording Burning the Days, which included drummer Neil Peart from Rush, and singer/songwriter Richard Marx. Peart played drums on three songs: "Even Now", "Save Me from Myself" and "Welcome to the Bottom", and wrote the lyrics to "Even Now".[1][7][8] Scannell asked Peart if he would be interested in playing drums on the song, and Peart responded, "No one else can play drums on it — I won’t let anyone else play drums on it. I have to play the drums on it."[8] Marx played piano on "Here" and produced Scannell's vocals on two of the album's songs.[9]

As with Go, longtime singer/guitarist Keith Kane is largely absent from Burning the Days, only being credited with performing harmony vocals on the album.[10] Scannell has insisted that Kane's minimal involvement in the recording of the album was not due to any tension between the two, explaining that Kane's limited involvement has been a part of the changing dynamics within the group that's naturally progressed through the years starting with their first album: "[W]ith There and Back Again, the album was purposefully half Keith's songs and half my songs. And what really started happening, quickly as we started progressing as a band, is that my output of songs just started greatly increasing. Keith’s input started slowing down, and I think that is evident with Running on Ice."[10] Over the years Kane has always stated contentment with his role in the band, and Scannell's as frontman. Kane stopped touring with the band in 2010 to work on solo projects.

According to an interview with Matt Scannell for Songfacts, he wrote "All Is Said and Done" about control freaks.[11]

Release

"All Is Said and Done" was first revealed on the band's MySpace page in November 2008.[12] The album was released on September 22, 2009,[3] on the band's own label, Outfall Records.[13]

Reception
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[14]
Alternative Addiction[15]
Los Angeles Times[16]

The album's reception was generally mixed. AllMusic praised the album for its "immaculate production" and its progressive rock elements introduced on the tracks that featured contributions by Neil Peart.[17] Alternative Addiction praised the album for its lyrics and guitar-work, calling it "a perfect showcase for Vertical Horizon’s return to the spotlight, and could easily be one of the best albums of 2009."[15] The Los Angeles Times was less enthusiastic, feeling that the album felt "flat and lifeless", and paled in comparison to Third Eye Blind's 2009 comeback album Ursa Major.[16]

Track listing

All songs written by Matt Scannell, except where noted.

  1. "All Is Said and Done" - 4:23
  2. "The Lucky One" - 3:54
  3. "The Middle Ground" - 4:24
  4. "I Believe In You" - 3:23
  5. "Save Me From Myself" - 4:17
  6. "Carrying On" - 3:36
  7. "Back to You" - 3:33
  8. "Can You Help Me" - 3:59
  9. "Afterglow" - 3:58
  10. "Here" - 3:41
  11. "Welcome to the Bottom" - 5:47
  12. "Even Now" (Scannell, Neil Peart) - 6:43

Personnel
gollark: It's easy to say that if you are just vaguely considering that, running it through the relatively unhurried processes of philosophizing™, that sort of thing. But probably less so if it's actually being turned over to emotion and such, because broadly speaking people reaaaallly don't want to die.
gollark: Am I better at resisting peer pressure than other people: well, I'd *like* to think so, but so would probably everyone else ever.
gollark: Anyway, I have, I think, reasonably strong "no genocide" ethics. But I don't know if, in a situation where everyone seemed implicitly/explicitly okay with helping with genocides, and where I feared that I would be punished if I either didn't help in some way or didn't appear supportive of helping, I would actually stick to this, since I don't think I've ever been in an environment with those sorts of pressures.
gollark: Maybe I should try arbitrarily increasing the confusion via recursion.
gollark: If people are randomly assigned (after initial mental development and such) to an environment where they're much more likely to do bad things, and one where they aren't, then it seems unreasonable to call people who are otherwise the same worse from being in the likely-to-do-bad-things environment.I suppose you could argue that how "good" you are is more about the change in probability between environments/the probability of a given real world environment being one which causes you to do bad things. But we can't check those with current technology.

References
  1. Chad. "Vertical Horizon Reveals Tracklisting". Alternative Addiction. July 11, 2009.
  2. Rotman, Natalie. "Vertical Horizon Reforms Band After 5-year Break" Archived October 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Associated Press. October 23, 2009.
  3. Chad. "Vertical Horizon Plans New Album". Alternative Addiction. November 21, 2008.
  4. McGuire, Colin. "All Is Said and Done: An Interview with Vertical Horizon". Popmatters. December 10, 2009.
  5. Chad. "Vertical Horizon Drummer Leaves Band". Alternative Addiction. July 9, 2005.
  6. Bouchard, Stephanie. "A Songwriting Machine Who Fishes in Maine". Portland Press Herald. October 29, 2009.
  7. Peart, Neil. "News, Weather, and Sports". NEP.com. June 17, 2006.
  8. Mover, Jonathan. "Matt Scannell on Neil Peart Artist P.O.V." Archived 2008-05-23 at the Wayback Machine. Drumhead. date unknown.
  9. Alleman, Annie. "Musical Friendship on Stage at Arcadia". The Courier-News. October 16, 2009.
  10. Alfieri, Victor. "Interview with Matt Scannell". Chicks w/ Guns. date unknown.
  11. "All Is Said and Done". Songfacts.com. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
  12. Official MySpace page, well before the album's release.
  13. http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/vertical-horizon-returns-release-album-burning-the-days-on-own-label/0012eLh9hm1As
  14. Allmusic review
  15. Alternative Addiction review Archived December 12, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  16. Los Angeles Times review
  17. http://www.allmusic.com/album/burning-the-days-mw0000823753
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