 | ||
| (Signature-looking scrawl in bottom right reads "Boulder Colorado 1992"; Art credit in booklet: "23 East"); (Red Garage Records) |
Why have I used R.E.M. as a reference point so much in my last few posts? I like them a lot, but I'm not a maniac about them or anything...I do listen to other bands. Am I just not creative enough to come up with other apt comparisons? I will try to reel it in a bit.
Anyways, that little bit of housekeeping out of the way...these guys remind me a bit of R.E.M.
This album screams "college rock radio". The jangly guitars, the bits of snide political commentary (see "Government" for the most blatant example...and a chorus that revels in its "R.E.M. isms"), the overall literacy...
There is a musical sophistication here too. Listen to tracks like "Yellow", with its great call- and-response chorus, and "New Rags" with its jerky, staccato guitar lines and you may be reminded of other erudite emissaries like the Talking Heads and XTC.
Any weaknesses? Front and center-the lack of consistency. When these guys get in the groove ("Yellow", "Government", "New Rags", "Sober"...) they are thoroughly enjoyable. Still, at 17 tracks, the album inevitably sags at points, and suffers from a bit of sameness- some songs blending into each other without much to distinguish them. Cutting this one down to about 10 or 11 tracks would likely have been beneficial. But who can really fault a band for wanting to give us "more"? It is also entirely possible that this was sort of a "demo reel"-meant to showcase a whole schwack of songs from the band's repertoire that could later be re-purposed for distribution on a bigger label.
Yellow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY5P0KwDzfo
A link to the Allmusic page, where you can find more info, and some sound clips of other songs on the album:
https://www.allmusic.com/album/sober-mw0000996912
 | ||
| (Back cover) |
 |
| (Reverse side of insert-credit "Gods Publishing") |
No comments:
Post a Comment