Music Review: Aly & AJ – into the Rush Deluxe Edition

At first glance it would seem that Aly & AJ are just your average Disney actors turned singers, much like labelmates Raven Simone, Hilary Duff and Jesse McCartney. They’re pretty, conservative girl-next-door types with blonde hair and blue eyes that act in Disney Channel Original Movies like Cow Belles and sing seemingly manufactured wannabe Pop-rock. But these conservative California girls have some major chops when it comes to music making. Both girls know how to play the guitar, and well, and also write much of their own music and write their own lyrics. And unlike Hilary Duff, these girls aren’t afraid of singing live. Although it seems to be a Disney policy for performances at the actual park to be lip-synched, Aly & AJ have performed live on such venues as Good Morning America and the 10th Anniversary Radio Disney Concert.

Capitolizing on the success of their first mainstream single, “Rush,” which made it into top 60 of the Billboard Hot 100, Aly & AJ have (as of August 8, 2006) re-released their debut album, Into The Rush, in a new special edition format (Into The Rush Deluxe Edition) with 3 brand new songs and 2 rearrangements of songs featured on the original album.

The second single off of the album, and also the first new song off of the re-release, is the song “Chemicals React,” which has had much success on the popular MTV show TRL and has gained quite a following online, despite the fact that the song has not officially been released to radio. “Chemicals React” is an up-tempo song featuring whispery vocals during the verses as well as stronger vocals and excellent harmonies by the girls during the chorus. “Chemicals React” is an excellent example of teen rock that has obvious early 90’s as well as 80’s rock influences. “Shine” follows suit stylistically as the second new song, although a bit darker sounding, it still has the same pop-rock sound that “Chemicals React” shows off. “Never Far Behind,” which is the third new track off the album, was actually previously released on the European and Japanese editions of the album, as well as a special release in Christian music stores, as the song was released to Christian radio. “Never Far Behind” defies expectations. Immediately when I heard the song was labeled as Christian Rock, I figured that it would be a lot softer and feature much more religious lyrics, but that was not the case. “Never Far Behind” does a fairly good job at being a good pop song.

Two older songs from the original release, “Something More” and “Collapsed,” have been rearranged to have a more pronounced sound in the instrumentation, as well as being more rock-based in style as opposed to their original poppy orientation. As well, bits of the vocals have been re-recorded with a different take on some of the lines in “Collapsed” and the addition of more adlibs in “Something More.” While the original versions of these songs were already good, these new arrangements are just spectacular.

While Into The Rush Deluxe Edition is obviously a ploy by Hollywood Records to push sales of the Into The Rush disc, the new songs, which are much stronger than anything off the original record, are more than worth buying the album for.