Lonely Road is the second studio album by American rock band The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, which was released on February 3, 2009. The album received a mixed reception from critics. Lonely Road debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200 and spawned two singles: "You Better Pray" and "Pen & Paper". To promote the record, the band toured across Asia, Australia and North America, with appearances at music festivals.
Background
In March 2008, Alternative Press reported that the band were currently in the studio.
Release
The first single off the album was "You Better Pray". It was released to radio on November 18, 2008. On December 3, it was announced that the group's next album, Lonely Road, would be released in February 2009. In the same announcement, the album's track listing was revealed. Two days later, "Pen & Paper" was released as a free download. Shortly afterwards, the band toured throughout the remainder of December. On December 15, a music video for "You Better Pray" premiered on MTV2's Unleashed programme. A day later, it was revealed that guitarist Elias Reidy had left the band back in October. In addition, the album's cover art was posted. Following this, the band started touring again in early January, running into early February. On January 28, the band's show in Toronto was cancelled due to a snow storm. Three weeks before the debut of the album, the songs "Represent", "Pull Me Back" and "Believe" were made available for free streaming from their website. On January 23, the album was made available for streaming through the band's Myspace. Lonely Road was released on February 3 through major labelVirgin Records. The vinyl version of the album featured different artwork and included the album on the CD. The band went on tour in Asia later in February, followed by an appearance at Soundwave festival in Australia in February and March. "Pen & Paper" impacted radio on March 3. In April, the band went on a tour of the US with Secondhand Serenade.
Reception
Critical response
Lonely Road garnered mixed reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 54, based on 5 reviews. A writer from Alternative Addiction wrote that the band "expanded outside their pop punk sound", saying that "No Spell" and the title track contain "a heavy dose of pop" and both "You Better Pray" and "Pleads and Postcards" "blend into the rock territory," saying they've "added on some new things that they couldn’t or didn’t do with the last album and they built on the things they did well." Rolling Stones Christian Hoard said about the record, "The band skips between emo pop and orchestral pomp while applying plenty of major-label gloss. The result: Much of the time the Jumpsuits end up sounding like a lesser version of Hawthorne Heights." AllMusic writer Andrew Leahey panned the album for overreaching on tracks that either contain "symphonic string schmaltz and fist-pumping guitars " or get excessive by adding "an honest-to-God gospel during the title track," and criticized Ronnie Winter's vocal delivery of "acrobatic flips around every melody, oversinging the songs within an inch of their lives." He concluded that "Don't You Fake It may have suffered from a lack of variety, but Lonely Road is plagued by different diseases: misguided ambition, outlandish excess, and a bad case of the ol' sophomore slump."
Commercial performance
The album debuted at number 14 on the Billboard 200, selling 26,000 copies in its first week. It outperformed their debut effort Don't You Fake It, which placed at number 25 and sold 1,000 fewer copies.
Track listing
All lyrics written by Ronnie Winter, all music written by Ronnie Winter, Elias Reidy, and Duke Kitchens.
