There isn't anything terrible about Distance to Empty. There just isn't anything incredible about it, either. The Lawrence band has filled an album with the kind of melodic malaise you listen to in the car when you're not listening to anything. The album is musically solid, lyrically earnest and perfectly likable. But the songs fade too easily into the background, bogged down by the weight of their own ambition. Distance to Empty is at its best when it shows focus and restraint. "Blue Eyed Demon" offers a welcome jolt from the album's sluggish pace, but at the album's midpoint, it comes too late. And the band pulls off the tortured-yearning thing on "14 Hours" precisely because the song finishes in less than 14 hours, a feat other tracks don't accomplish with as much success. The relative precision of "14 Hours" almost redeems stomach-churning lines such as There's an empty feeling in my chest/Comparable to not having eaten in 14 hours/But it's not food I'm hungry for/I just want to see you walk through my door. Distance to Empty bookends Distance to Empty with another pair of solid tracks, the tumultuous "Brainstorm" and the candy-coated coda "No Regrets," but the meandering in between will leave many listeners with an empty tank well before they reach the final destination.
