Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

You hear it over and over again. Either a talented young group has a solid lead vocalist backed by subpar instrumentalists or the instrumentalists are amazing and the vocals make you want to cry. On Between the Trees’ debut release The Story and the Song, Ryan Kirkland – at just 19 years of age – is the frontman and definite all-star of this album. And that’s not even to say that he’s perfect, either. I’d like to hear him add an intimate side to his voice, as he seems almost reluctant to do anything other than solidly belt out the notes. It reminds almost reminds me a little of Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy in his early stages, in the way that you can clearly hear that he is talented but is lacking something and is visibly holding back in order to do who knows what. Darlin is almost intimate, but I’d like to possibly see Kirkland go acoustic on our asses, and he could have a hit like Tom Higginson from Plain White T’s did with Hey There, Delilah.

I said the first statement of this review as a means of hyperbole. The backing band is actually a lot better than music I’ve heard before, but Kirkland just stands out more than the rest (and maybe that’s because most music these days is vocally driven instead of instrumentally driven as was the case in the past). The band is cohesive throughout most of the album, and they even border on something that could be big at times (The Forward is a solid, riff-driven guitar song that is both catchy and well put together).

This band isn’t bringing anything new to the table for the emo-pop genre that they are lumped into, but they sound a lot better than a lot of music out there right now and could definitely be heard on a radio station near you soon, especially with the label backing from Motown. The world is their oyster, as the cliché goes.

The best part of this band is that it was built the right way, with most of the members starting out together in high school. "Playing well wasn't what drew us to each other," Ryan explains. "We figured that we would become good at what we did with time, and we didn't worry about how long that would take. What was always most important to us was our personal connections to each other. With that, we knew that we'd be able to do whatever we needed to do." They even write, too!

I’m not saying that this is a group of world-beaters or that they’ll ever grace the halls of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame one day as something other than a group of tourists with a bunch of teenage girls swooning for them. But what I am saying is that this album is worth picking up if you want to hear a group that you’ll hear on the radio before you hear them on the radio.