I realized I was saying “I don’t know anything about this…”
at the start of every review and that’s ridiculous.
(follow-up warning - the album description on the Bandcamp page is about as pretentious as it gets)
Mimi Pretend
I like this Cure nice-goth from the early 80s guitar sound.
They’re singing through a Strokes megaphone, but softly. Repetitive snare hits
and strumming the same two notes over and over – so far so good.
Silvertonic
I dig that reverb (I always will) but the vocals are a
little moribund. Like a British sketch comedy making fun of goths without
having ever actually interacted with a goth kind of moribund. Somehow the song
gets way more sparse by the last half. I don’t think I like this one but now I’m
pretty sure I listened to it twice by mistake.
Dead Museum
Sparse might be the name of the game here. I don’t actually
have a problem with that but two things are pulling me out of the minute-plus
intro – the fact that someone is sporadically laughing loudly next to me and
the intensity of the snare drum. I don’t usually keep my music volume too loud
but maybe now is the time. VOLUME UP BEEP That’s better. The snare fades into
the mix once the nice fuzzy guitar starts. This is definitely more my speed
than the last song. I wish it built a little more so the distortion was coming
in waves by the end (like Th Faith Healers) but it’s still OK. I don’t like the
whammy bar outro though.
Ziggy
Better be about Bowie. I don’t know how it couldn’t be. Here
comes that bastard snare drum. There was a nice echoing vocal effect and now
all I can hear is the stupid snare. About 90 seconds in all the fuzz goes away
and it actually works really well. Even though pretty much nothing new happened
in the last four minutes of the song I really enjoyed it.
Everything, All The Time
This one’s a little more rock-like. In a bad way. They used
the distortion cutting out trick again and it didn’t work as well this time. I
hate this snare drum so much. This song wasn’t good.
Modern English Decoration
This is where this band seems to be at their best. Mild and
repetitive, not trying too hard. This song sounds like old Dandy Warhols with
the complex layering removed. Not bad at all. The cutting in and out of the
distortion and fuzz effect can get a little irritating because it’s not done
with a lot of finesse but I could definitely listen to this song again.
Full Of Men
I’m kind of feeling like this has just been the same three
songs repeating, which isn’t impossible considering one of them repeated without
me realizing it earlier. This one is back to snare central and 5,000 different
guitar pedals changing in and out with no real reason. This song is a total
mess and that SNARE IS STIL TAP TAP TAPPING.
Saw A Habit Forming
They’re definitely better when they just find something that
works pretty well and repeat it for five minutes. I can’t hear a single word being
sung but that’s fine. If their strength was in the lyrics they probably would
have pushed them to the forefront a little more.
Victorian Acid
That underwater effect on the vocals is ridiculous. It
belongs in The Incredible Mr. Limpet, not a shoegaze song. As much as I hate
the snare drum on this album, I think it’s greatest failing is the fact that
they have 50 different effects and can’t stop themselves from using them all on
every single song. I can’t even hear the rest of the song because of the
burbling sounds of the little mermaid’s backup choir.
Protestant Work Slump
That is a super loud and clear guitar after the last song
where the guitar was strangled by an octopus and then buried at the bottom of
the sea. Thankfully, this final song seems to be more in line with the songs
from the album I’ve liked better. I’m not going to go with “best” because there’s
a crummy interlude with warbling high-pitched vocals and a ton of snare drum. There’s
more groove than not and those are the times when I can ignore the snare drum
most. I wonder if I would have liked this album better if it had been mixed
differently. I’ll never know.
Rating: Three vicious snare drum taps out of five.
Completely middle-of the road if you like repetitive fuzz (and I do). If you
don’t like it than you’ll hate this album but then you’d hate anything that
sounds like this so why are you even asking? Idiot.
Download links:
MediaFire
Google Drive
No comments:
Post a Comment