It’s a difficult time to be in an emo band. Recent high school graduates with better haircuts are flooding the music scene with earnest lyrics and impossible dreams. To defend its spot on the Warped Tour, veterans like Matchbook Romance try to up the ante by imitating the epic grandeur of breakout scenesters such as Brand New and Coheed and Cambria.

While Voices is an improvement over the band’s earlier material, long, redundant songs such as “Singing Bridges (We All Fall)” and the terribly titled “Goody, Like Two Shoes” become exhausting. Three minutes of cliché emo lyrics about pain, scars and hating ex-girlfriends is awful enough — seven cringe-inducing minutes is just unfathomable.

Singer Andrew Jordan delivers the album’s bright spots, his shining moment coming during a particularly great vocal performance on “Say It Like You Mean It.” Unfortunately, from the piano-laced intro track “You Can Run, But We’ll Find You” to the unnecessary hidden acoustic track at the end of the disc, Voices falls victim to the band’s ambition. Grade: C-