How to Save a Life

1	She Is 3:58
2	Over My Head (Cable Car) 3:58
3	How to Save a Life 4:23
4	All at Once 3:48
5	Fall Away 4:23
6	Heaven Forbid 4:01
7	Look After You 4:28
8	Hundred 4:14
9	Vienna 3:51
10	Dead Wrong 3:06
11	Little House 2:31
12	Trust Me 3:22

Barnes & Noble

It's not that hard to write a catchy tune, but crafting songs that create an emotional connection with just about anyone who hears them -- well, that's an altogether tougher task. Despite their relative youth -- frontman and primary songwriter Isaac Slade is just 25 -- this Denver-bred quartet proved their ability to do just that with the breakthrough hit "Over My Head (Cable Car)," a poignant tale that details Slade's relationship with his brother in remarkably universal language. Slade's piano playing is the primary coloring agent in songs such as "Look After You" and "Heaven Forbid," and while that might initially suggest similarly constructed British bands like Coldplay and Keane, there's nothing particularly Anglophilic about what lurks in the grooves of How to Save a Life. If anything, the foursome come across as sincere torchbearers of old-school Americana -- the branch nurtured by folks like Jakob Dylan and the Gin Blossoms -- who'll be capable of soldiering on no matter which way the prevailing pop winds blow. David Sprague

All Music Guide

The Fray were among the first of the flood of bands that combined the influence of British neo-stadium acts like Coldplay and Keane, the retro-AOR bands of the mid-'90s -- chief among them Counting Crows and the Wallflowers -- and American emo-pop bands like Something Corporate and Jimmy Eat World. The Denver four-piece has the requisite piano and flag-waving choruses of the Brits, the slick sound and unfailing conservatism of the AOR bands, and the over-emoted vocals and confessional nature that are cornerstones of emo. All the songs on their debut, How to Save a Life, sound almost exactly alike and also exactly like you would expect -- sincere, melodic, authentic, and bereft of anything surprising or exciting. This doesn't make for the kind of record that people will want to listen to over and over again but for modern rock, it isn't half-bad. A couple of songs, like "Over My Head (Cable Car)" and "Dead Wrong," might even sound good in the background of a WB teen drama. Tim Sendra