Anberlin finds what it lost

The year 2007 has been good to Anberlin. In February, it released its critically acclaimed third album Cities, which debuted at No. 19 on the Billboard charts. Then, in the summer, the band was signed to major label Universal Republic. To cap off the year -- and before it enters the studio for record No. 4 -- it is burning off a bunch of b-sides in the form of Lost Songs.\nMany of the tracks on Lost Songs have been heard before, either on special editions of older albums or on compilations, but it contains a few acoustic tracks and covers that any Anberlin fan would want to hear.\nOf the "unreleased" tracks, "Uncanny" is easily the strongest. The song was previously found on a special edition of Cities but didn't really fit that album's mood. It's an upbeat track about traveling, as Stephen Christian unleashes the vocals "Anywhere say anywhere / As long as I'm with you / Anything ask anything / We'll watch the world go by" and includes some Anberlin staples: a driving acoustic guitar, Nathan Young's pulsating drums and Christian's soaring vocals.\n"Dismantle. Repair" is the best of the album's acoustic numbers, mostly because it's one of the best songs the band has ever written. The original version is one of Anberlin's harder songs, but the more subdued version works almost as well because it keeps all the original's miniscule elements and integrates them into an acoustic setting.\nThe covers -- including Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence," and The Smiths' "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" -- are solid, but none of them really stick out unless you're a huge fan of covers. Most of the songs Anberlin decided to cover have been covered by a lot of other bands as well, so there's nothing particularly superior about them. \nThe three demos of songs from previous albums seem like filler, too. The quality of the tracks is definitely below average. If Anberlin wanted to use them so badly, it could have re-recorded them and labeled them as different versions.\nLost Songs is a great pickup for die-hard Anberlin fans who haven't scoured the Internet to find these tracks, which have all been readily available, and want to have everything in their catalog. Everyone else should stick to listening to Cities, which is one of 2007's best in the emo genre.