The End of the World French Exit by: Julia Gray Thu:30-Oct-08 Label: Flameshovel Year: 2008 WB rating 85 out of 100

The album opens with the ambient sounds of a bar and the band tuning up in front of a small crowd. The track is called 'Born to Rage', but perhaps it more appropriately could have been called 'Born to Run'. The End of the World inherits much from the greater New York area musical lineage of singer-songwriters. Chronicling the intimate moments of personal friends, their album, French Exit, tells a universally familiar story through earnest folk with pop embellishments.
 
It's hard to think it a coincidence that Benjamin Smith and Stefan Marolachakis chose a band name that corresponds to a song title of The Cure. The End of the World sounds like a mellow version of The Strokes, but had they grown up during the golden age of rock instead of the sunset days of punk, they could have easily sounded more like Springsteen than The Smiths. The Brooklyn based band consists of founders Smith and Marolachakis, along with Sam Axelrod on bass and Mike Incze on pedal steel and guitar. French Exit is the follow-up album to You're Making It Come Alive, it hits stores the same time US citizens hit the polls on November 4th.
 
While it seems easy to over-hype another educated indie-band out of Brooklyn – Smith and Marolachkis met while at Tufts University – The End of the World doesn't just revel in post-punk revival. The touch of bluegrass on 'Learning' shows they can stretch their musical talent a little farther than your average underground band. Combine this with Marolachakis' honest and crisp vocals, and you have an album that hits on the addictive. Smith punctuates sentiments like the working class ennui on 'Someone Else's Dollar' with subtle guitar under the lines "Still I want to look good for my friends/and I still, I still got to pay the rent" while Marolachakis hammers the drudgery home with a repetitive drum beat.
 
When the two play well off each other, it is magic. At times, the album can seem saturated in the same sound, but tracks like 'Jody', 'Railroad Living', and 'Kate's Dream' lift the record from these slight monotone indulgences. Smith lets his punk roots shine on 'Section House', another track that breathes life into a sometimes weighty album.
 
The opening track finds the band being heckled by a friend in the crowd that jokingly tells them to "get more sentimental". The End of the World seems to have taken this to heart. Borrowing from a line in their song 'I Don't Wanna Lose' where Marolachakis urges "waiting around is the only way to lose", The End of the World wastes no time mincing words. Each track is filled with heartfelt sentiment and an honest sincerity. They seem incapable of working themselves into a rage, and instead the album is buoyed with plaintive and rich harmonies. The open and sometimes maudlin tone of the album seems a testament to irony in light of the titular beseeching of the opening track. However, it's warm welcome with Marolachakis' bemused demurring "Thanks for coming everybody! …We're gonna have, we're gonna have a good time" seems the perfect opening for this intimate album.
 
The band has already enjoyed some moderate success with the single 'This Little Theater' featured on The Manchurian Candidate soundtrack, and this album seems poised to garner them more buzz. The record may be called French Exit, but Smith and Marolachakis need not bow out gracefully any time soon.