I real­ly have to say some­thing about No Motiv. When I first heard them, it was in prepa­ra­tion of a con­cert I was going to when they were open­ing for Strung Out about four years ago. I did­n’t real­ly like their first two albums aside from a few songs. They had a dis­tinct sound, but their lyrics, like advice from a com­fort­ing friend, did­n’t quite match. This band was like those kids I nev­er real­ly knew in high school, who weren’t pop­u­lar but had their own clique nonethe­less, and spent their free time mak­ing up songs and prac­tic­ing their instru­ments. The guys I’d sort of root for, not because their music blew me away, but because there was no one to appre­ci­ate them.

Their lat­est album, how­ev­er, takes things in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, hint­ed at in the album title “Daylight Breaking”. It’s dark­er, it’s mood­i­er, and it’s more devel­oped. Jeremy has clear­ly become more con­fi­dent with his singing, and this goes hand-in-hand with the new range of sound that they’ve devel­oped, from qui­et and bar­ren to heavy and angry. In pre­vi­ous albums, he sound­ed con­strict­ed, but now screams emo­tion­al­ly with con­trolled unre­straint. The lyrics demon­strate a new matu­ri­ty, and present a log­i­cal pro­gres­sion from their pre­vi­ous work. This is the album that they were meant to write, an album that makes them musi­cians and not just band mem­bers.

Now, as I lis­ten to their old­er mate­r­i­al, every­thing clicks, and I real­ize that I just was­n’t ready for this music four years ago. I don’t have any music that’s quite like this; a jour­ney through a com­ing-of-age that’s filled with ener­getic hope­ful­ness, along with the ups and downs asso­ci­at­ed with per­son­al growth, a sort of inspir­ing sad­ness. The lyrics bring me back to being a teenag­er again, when I thought peo­ple on TV were nor­mal, and believed that I should have been going through the same dain­ty prob­lems. It makes me think of what I want­ed to expe­ri­ence a long time ago, but nev­er had the chance.