thePULSE
Lonely Road
By Jillian Locke, Music Editor
With their second Virgin Records release, Lonely Road, Florida’s pop-rock monster, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, has truly marked a coming of age milestone in their fledgling career. Packed with 11 tracks of memorable riffage and pop-tacular beats, Lonely Road swerves from My Chemical Romance-esque edgy rock to pure pop classics reminiscent of Hoobastank, with even a sprinkling of doo-wop; this pop-classic landed at #14 on the national Billboard Top 200 during its debut week back in February, and even snagged the No. 1 Alternative digital album position and landed a spot in the Top 20 Alternative Rock Hit with the first single, “You Better Pray.” The numbers clearly speak for themselves as TRJA catapult their standing and career with this highly personal and observational sophomore release.
Starting out as an acoustic two-piece covering Blink-182 and MXPX, vocalist Ronnie Winters and guitarist Duke Kitchens planted the seeds for what was to become a pop-rock phenomenon back in 2003 in Middleburg, Florida. After a few line-up changes and etching a deal with a major record label, TRJA has solidified their sound by spanning sound scopes and overlapping genres, making their sound rise above the usual spectrum of pop-rock and planting them firmly in the limelight.
“You Better Pray” harkens back to the sounds of pop-rock god predecessors My Chemical Romance, opening the album with blistering intensity and opening the doors to what vocalist Winters describes as “…a bit of a risk, a little departure, but it’s still Red Jumpsuit.” With lyrics touching on the current war in “Pleads and Postcards” and “Godspeed” to generational relationships within the family circuit in “Lonely Road” to the doo-wop/nostalgic love song essence of “Believe,” TRJA covers all spectrums of the lyrical and musical rainbow with this take-a-chance effort.
Produced by Howard Benson, who, not surprisingly, is responsible for the million dollar sounds of such bands as My Chemical Romance, Hoobastank, P.O.D., and All-American Rejects, Lonely Road is paving a very full and lucrative road for these rising stars.
