That New Sound You’re Looking For – What’s Eating Gilbert

I’ll admit it. When I first heard of What’s Eating Gilbert (he toured with Anthony Raneri of Bayside this past summer and I had tickets to see him) I had no idea that by Gilbert it was meant to be Chad Gilbert, lead guitarist and backing vocals of New Found Glory. (A Bayside influence, coincidentally?) I was too caught up, first, in the references. That New Sound You’re Looking For is an almost-direct quote from the cult classic and Joe-Stay-favorite Back to the Future Part One, and the band name What’s Eating Gilbert is a take on the indie-early-90’s-Johnny-Depp-Leo-di-Caprio film of almost the same name (which in itself was based off the book What’s Eating Gilbert Grape which I never read). Then I was entrapped in the sound. Whether it was the new sound Gilbert himself was looking for or the new sound I was looking for, I wasn’t sure, but I loved it from the very first dual-vocal chorus of the album’s lead single “You’re the Most.” It was like a reincarnation of New Found Glory’s From the Screen to the Stereo numbers such as “That Thing You Do!”, or at least a very fitting follow-up. But I still didn’t make the connection. I was swimming headfirst into the album.

The songs on the album, while lacking a bit in diversity on the front nine, are terribly catchy. They evoke the period to which Marty McFly time travels in the movie from which the album takes its name, the mid-fifties, with all its bubblegummy pop and doo-wop sensibility provided by backing female vocals on nearly every track. And while tracks like “Follow Her Around” and “Recurring Dreams” might be creepy in other venues (“If she would leave me and start dating some new jerk in town/Yeah I’d still follow her around” and “I have recurring dreams about you/I want to tell you but I think you’d be scared to know that I have recurring dreams about you”) Gilbert plays the entire album off as boyish, youthful, and innocent. The afore-mentioned “You’re the Most” and “Follow Her Around” are among my favorites, as are “Who Do You Love,” (a grandson to “Book of Love”) “Show Off,” (a rousing Chuck Berry-eque, two chord rocker) “From the Start” (another classic cult movie nod, this time to “Wayne’s World”) “Ain’t Been Happy With Me” (which, despite an eyebrow-raising musical idiosyncracy in the chorus that I can identify but can’t explain, is beautiful in its deviating rockabilly leanings) and the one that begs to be played at a wedding, “Wearing Your Ring.”

The album works brilliantly together, with the almost repetitive likenesses of the songs aiding in calling back to an era of short, fun-loving, pop songs about girls. I thought it, at first, a fun and promising start to a guy new on the scene playing off nostalgic and cult references and hitting a real home-run. To realize that it is Chad Gilbert of New Found Glory (and Hayley Williams of Paramore duets with him on “Wearing Your Ring” (and that the two of them are actually married)) does these things to the album: 1) It makes me like NFG even more 2) It gives the record an air of legitimacy that enhances its appeal and 3) Reignites the excitement of exploring established artists’ solo projects in my gut. Indeed, if Gilbert was insisting that this is the new sound that I am looking for, then perhaps he is right.