Lil' Indie Round-Up: The Rakehells, Vita Ruins, Mobile Wash Unit, Brothers At Sea

The Rakehells- Please Yourself Or The Devil Himself

I am convinced that, if not for Jack White dubbing one of his bands The Raconteurs, this band would not be called The Rakehells. I'm convinced of this because The Rakehells are such unimaginative, boring, and forgettable modern rock bar band-esque dudes that I can't believe they would think to pick out such an obscure and old timey name on their own.

This is the sort of band that inevitably gets words like “attitude” and “sneer” and “Mick Jagger” thrown at it when journalists attend their live shows. This, despite the fact that they sound nothing like the Rolling Stones at all. Ten years too late to jump on the Strokes/White Stripes garage rock revival of the early 00s, The Rakehells only work in a culture of drink specials and cheap beer, of poor judgment, of people who aggressively worry about whether a band “rocks” or not.

Well, The Rakehells do rock. I guess. 'Souls For Sale' certainly rocks, but it rocks in that “every song should be shorter than three minutes, every guitar should have some flaccid distortion on it, and every song should sound the fucking same” way that Green Day does. Meaning this is your Dad's idea of what passes for rock music in 2010, and it's no wonder he, to say nothing of you, dear reader, prefers to tune in to the local classic rock station when listening to the radio. I'd rather hear a mediocre 70s era Rolling Stones deep cut or 'Welcome To The Jungle' for the umpteenth time than the Pro Tools sculpted tedium of 'Meat On A Stick.' On the bright side, this album helped me realize that 'hard rock' is essentially 'metal' for wimps and guys who are too old to still be considered metal but have kept the same haircut/facial hair since they saw Motley Crue on a Dr. Feelgood era tour.

Vita Ruins- A Day Without A Name

I swear I know the organ part on 'Godspeed To That Polytheist' from somewhere, to the point where I'm wondering if it's a sample or lifted directly, homage-style, from another song. Yeah, this is the most interesting way I could think of to introduce this album.

A Day Without A Name traffics in the sound of bands who came of age during the post-OK Computer, post-late 90s post-rock boom. Which means, what, exactly? Well, it means they sound like The Doves or any number of other ostensibly guitar-based indie rock bands who use post-rock atmospherics and electronic flourishes to morph their music, and thus sounding less like the Blur of 'Song 2' and more like the Blur of 'Battle.' Maybe Vita Ruins are a bit more intense than 'Battle.' The singer's voice is permanently wrapped in some kind of mid-fi distortion that does nothing and doesn't need to be there. So, I guess, you could also say: a less memorable and enjoyable version of 'Battle.'

I don't intend for this review to be so short, but I simply can't think of a lot to say about Vita Ruins or this album. I feel as though I've reviewed a half dozen of these bands for the Lil Indie Round-Up column over the years, and there is a now epidemic level of faceless competency to A Day Without A Name. If you want more of the same, here it is.

Mobile Wash Unit- Tent

Dig out your copy of Tigermilk by Belle & Sebastian and put on 'Electronic Renaissance.' Do you find yourself wishing that the band had taken up this sort of style instead of continuing on their twee-pop/indie-pop trajectory? At the same time, dig out your copy of Emperor Tomato Ketchup by Stereolab and put on pretty much any of the songs. Do you find yourself wishing the band wasn't as experimental and had a male singer?

If you answered “yes” to either of these scenarios, then you'll probably like Mobile Wash Unit. Tent is the sound of a band attempting to reconcile jangly guitar based pop/rock with retro synth-pop/electro-pop. The more clubby/danceable tracks like 'Koko' wouldn't sound out of place in some Manhattan hipster bar, while something like 'Restart', which sounds like a caffeinated Interpol, could slip into a coffehouse's playlist and not offend anyone.

There's really nothing wrong with this album in conception or execution. It is so earnest and digestible, all the potential hard edges and personality having been sanded off and scrubbed clean, that it is like the music equivalent of lettuce. Good for digestion, not enough there to offend or delight anyone.

Brothers At Sea- This Is A Redemption Melody EP

I'm sorry to not get to the music right away, but I'm curious why it is exactly that people romanticize the notion of really young bands who choose to pursue their music career rather than go to college. This isn't the 1960s anymore, and it's no longer cool or respectable, at least to me, to think that you really have anything interesting to add to music, or any artform, at age 20. Hell, I remember being 20 and thinking I was so sophisticated and intelligent, but if I dig out my writing from that period, I recoil in self-loathing.

Admittedly, it would be one thing if said band of 20 somethings were doing anything remotely new or interesting with their music. Bob Dylan worked as a young artist because he was so idiosyncratic and ahead of his time. Some young dude singing old Woodie Guthrie songs about the 20s and 30s politics was a true curio for its time, and there has always been something about Bob Dylan that makes you think he has an old soul.

A band like Brothers At Sea is practically the opposite. They sound exactly like every other post-Weezer, post-Incubus, post-Jimmy Eat World modern rock band, so when the press release reads “...might be oozing with radio-friendly appeal, but for once, this might not be a bad thing,” allow me to ask: when has having a sound that can be described as “radio-friendly” ever been a good thing? The kind of people who make such pronouncements are always A&R reps and faceless PR goons of record labels, and whose idea of what makes good music is everything that was popular five years ago and thus completely safe, proven, and, you guessed it, also radio-friendly.

This is all a long way of saying, I don't understand why bands who sound like this even bother with indie level promotion and labels. They should just keep plugging away and sending demo tapes to the big labels until they get signed and can have a moderate level of success after one of their songs ends up on the soundtrack of the next teen sex comedy.

Lil' Indie Round-Up: Murdocks, Weep, The National Rifle

A strong sense of confusion overtakes me whenever I see the pilsener style beers that microbreweries put out. Why is Sam Adams or whichever-regional-company-you-adore bothering to make a beer that is the same thing as Bud, Miller, or Coors? The same bland, faceless, boring, unimaginative beer, even from a more lovingly crafted home, is still going to taste exactly like all the others. So I'm always confused when I hear bands like The Murdocks, who for all intents and purposes are an indie band who sound like the bland, faceless, boring, unimaginative pop punk/power pop backed by major labels that I actively avoid. (Danger! Elitist snob quip ahead!) Amazing how much happier I am now that I don't watch TV or listen to the radio.

You know all of those faceless bands who popped up in Green Day's Dookie wake, those alternative rock, power-punk-pop groups with names like Fountains Of Wayne and New Found Glory, who were doomed to achieve popularity for a few months and then dwell forever on radio stations looking back on the pop music of the 00s, forgotten by the rest of the world? Well, The Murdocks sound just like them. Distortionist is a mediocre-at-best album in this style, and that's all you need to know to decide if you want it or not.

I feel genuine sympathy for PR people. Their job is extremely imaginative and creative in its utter lack of honesty or self control. During college I took one of those basic newswriting courses and discovered I had a penchant for crapping out really good material simply because I used and abused the tropes and cliches of the form. My professor, who worked for the single big paper in my area, told me I was a natural at writing for TV news or newspapers. It made me run to the worthless sanctity of music criticism/journalism I poke at in my free time, but the class also made me understand the tough job that PR people have. They do the kind of work that the rest of us think we're above doing or don't have the sheer brass balls to do. Because something like the press release for Distortionist would be an impossible task for me. I would go so far as to say I enjoyed and respected this press release more than the album itself; I couldn't possibly make this music sound as thrilling and multi-faceted as the PR release does. Here's some choice quotes to close with; bolded emphasis is mine:

“...the results exceeded both band and audience expectations; the sugar-pop melodies and raw edginess were still there, but the songs were more fine-tuned and complex.”

“The band’s tour itinerary reflects this mentality, with shows at vomit-stained dive bars in Memphis, to house parties in Iowa City, to sold out shows with bands like Cake, Ben Kweller, and Local H(!?).”

“Distortionist is undoubtedly a step forward for the band, both their heaviest and poppiest work to date. It is this aesthetic dissonance that sets Murdocks apart from other artist: they are as simple as they are challenging, as morbid as they are innocent, as naïve as they are jaded.”

3 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

This EP has one of the better covers I've come across lately. It has the same quality as Sunset Rubdown's Random Spirit Lover where you don't notice the key element straightaway. In the case of Spirit, there's some magician dude in the middle of it all. In this case, there's a skull.

The National Rifle are one of the better unknown bands I've come across lately. I've got a huge backlog of reviews to write and this EP has been kicking around my apartment for months simply because I can't think of the proper way to explain their sound and why I like it. Vanity Press showcases a potent brew of 90s and 00s indie rock that sounds original yet owes obvious debts to other bands. Like the first Tapes 'nTapes album, really. But where The Loon tipped its hat to the Pixies, Pavement, and Modest Mouse, The National Rifle are firmly in the Spoon school. There's a bit of Britt Daniel about the singer, and the buoyant rhythms of tracks like 'She's A Waste' are right out of Spoon's playbook. Some of the piano/keyboard parts on 'Jazz History Of The World' are highly reminiscent of Girls Can Tell...but again, somehow this music is merely redolent instead of redundant.

The final track 'Too Much T.V.' is easily the best of this bunch, largely because it plays down the band's Spoon-ocity. Set to a thunking bass and drum beat, the song breaks down into some sharp guitar fired choruses with male/female twin vocals from some alternate world where Black Francis and Kim Deal sang together and were copacetic instead of growing to despise each other. But don't get too excited. This EP is pretty good, but seeing as how it's their fourth to date, it's a bit worrying that I feel that they still have some more growth to reach that proper Tapes 'n Tapes ratio of originality to redolence. After all, how many singles and EP's did Pavement, The Strokes, and Interpol need to shed the obvious scales left over from their dinosaur heritages? Assuming you follow me, suffice it to say in every case it was less than four. Here's hoping their forthcoming (still?) album delivers the goods.

4 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Hahahahahaha!

No, seriously, this is a joke, right? I'm not even going to bother taking off the shrink wrap. You can't have a band name, album title, and cover like that and expect me not to laugh.

Wait, it's the band of one of the co-creators of The Venture Bros.? Well, may as well do my duty and give it a fair listen. Maybe it's like a goth version of Tenacious D.

OK, it's a raspy voiced dude fronting a band who can't decide if they want to be The Cure or one of those more modern bands who straddle the metal/gothy line and have slick production and some keyboards. You know, like Orgy did. Wait, are they still around? But I digress. Sample lyric from 'Let Me': “If the rain would let up/moments wouldn't seem bleak.” I may've killed for that kind of sophistication in high school, but now it just makes me want to kill myself because it's so suffused with overwrought depressed melodrama. There's a song with the subtitle '(Nov. Mix)', which I assume I means “November.” It's one of those Fall/Winter months where the weather is all UGH and sad and bleak, yo.

OK, I'm still not fully convinced this isn't some kind of joke or faux-band-becomes-real-band like Dethklok. Do I need to add that the album ends with a one-two punch of covers of 'Right Here, Right Now' (Jesus Jones) and 'Shut Up And Drive' (Rihanna)? Yeah I know, it confuses the matter further still.

Assuming it is a joke, it's not a very funny one. It's just cliched enough in a gothy/80s kind of way that it feels authentic, so it's able to mock its form with its ironic content But the songs aren't that great and it's not over-the-top enough to be good-bad. Well, the combination of the cover, album title, and album cover are pretty funny. Like stumbling on an especially pathetic LiveJournal circa 2000.

Assuming it's meant seriously...Doc Hammer, keep your day job.

2 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

Lil' Indie Round-Up

War Tapes EP by War Tapes

What Do They Sound Like??: 90s alt rock with a dramatic, deep voiced singer and 80s synth-pop/new wave undertones.

Buy, Meh, Bleh: Meh. War Tapes are a band who remind you of other groups without adding any new touches or finesse of their own. They aren't terrible but the songs on this EP pass by without sinking any real hooks into you.

Music For Dorothy by Topas & Mudphonic

What Do They Sound Like??: Like a bar band combining funk, blues, R&B, and a touch of jazz, boasting downhome grooves and a laid back (but not in a lazy way) vibe.

Buy, Meh, Bleh: You know what?? Buy. If you're into that funky 70s bar band vibe--harmonicas, organs, guitars, and a semi-raspy singer--then you'll love this band. It's good music for hanging out with friends or killing a six pack, but close listening at home leaves something to be desired.

Supersaturated by The Singhs

What Do They Sound Like??: Pretty much like the cover: a super glossy sheen that leaves no impression. Something vaguely glam rock about the whole album, with an immaculate production and polish that robs what is obstensibly rock music of any kind of rocking.

Buy, Meh, Bleh: Bleh. Judging by the way the band looks, The Singhs are an alternate universe version of Guided By Voices in which Robert Pollard and co. never made it and became an oddly faceless and personality-less glam rock/arena rock band who never rock and can't write an interesting song to save their lives. When I listen to Supersaturated it's as though the band keeps the volume and energy level down because they don't want to wake up their wives or something. Imagine some high powered executive, rendered impotent and humor-less by years of cigars and cocaine, lounging in a room with entirely black furniture; this is the music he listens to to unwind. This album is the sort of thing I point to when I write things like "I don't like Rehearsing My Choir by the Fiery Furnaces but sometimes a spectacular, experimental failure is better than a competently produced and played but mediocre album." Mediocrity is worse than flat out sucking in my book.

Lil' Indie Round-Up

I've decided to re-launch the Lil' Indie Round-Up with less snark but no less brutal honesty. Hopefully this is more useful.Ain't No Surprise by Leopold and His Fiction

What Do They Sound Like??: Kind of a bluesy White Stripes 60s garage rock-ish sound meets Bob Dylan's mid 60s electric period. Maybe some Loaded era Velvet Underground. Maybe. The singer sounds like Jack White on the rock songs and Devendra Banhart on the slow/acoustic songs.

Buy, Meh, Bleh: Meh. This band's first problem is that they don't have any hooks in their songs. There's no melody or line or thing that draws you in and keeps you coming back. Their second problem is that the two best songs on here--the title track and 'Tiger Lily'--are basically rip offs of other, better songs. 'Ain't No Surprise' literally is 'Tombstone Blues' by Bob Dylan. You're a fucking liar if you can listen to this song and not say "is this a cover??" Meanwhile, 'Tiger Lily' is such a Devendra Banhart sound-alike that I guarantee I could play this for a friend and convince them it was a B-side. Ultimately, this band isn't terrible. They're just unoriginal and unremarkable.

Larrabee by Movers & Shakers

What Do They Sound Like??: A singer who either sounds like Elvis Costello or any old punk hollerer combined with a band who spend an entire album trying to decide what they are: a rustic indie rock band or a slightly more polished and rustic version of The Clash?? Place your bets now on how many members have beards.

Buy, Meh, Bleh: Meh. This album starts off fairly promisingly with the Fleet Foxes-esque vocal harmonies on 'Adventures In An Unrealistic Life.' But from there the lyrics either say too little with too many words or merely say too little while the music grows less interesting and somehow more generic despite making use of a decent variety of sounds. I dunno what it is, but when I listen to this album I feel like I see everything coming. There's no sense of surprise or discovery here. The singer is extremely limited and it doesn't work for the band like it can for some (David Berman, take a bow) and the music never delivers any kind of revelatory moment or melody. I've listened to it twice and I can't remember much except that I kind of like the first song.

We Are The Mystery Tramps EP by The Mystery Tramps

What Do They Sound Like??: If you grew up in the 90s, I'm willing to bet your high school had a local band or two that had a vaguely punk pop/rock sound, like Blink 182 without the dick/fart jokes, maybe. That's what this band sounds like. They look and sound young.

Buy, Meh, Bleh: BLEH. I have to confess that I wanted to like this band because hey, they named themselves after a Dylan lyric. Unfortunately they don't live up to it, not nearly. They're just too god damn young and their music sounds it. I have a journal or two full of just these kind of amateurish "meaningful" lyrical sentiments like "everyone's an actor" (woah, that's like, deep...in all fairness, most of my stuff was as bad if not worse), but the only people that teenagers can speak to is teenagers, ultimately. If you aren't (literally) retarded or under the age of 20, you'll find it insulting that a group of kids who can't even grow facial hair let alone buy wine claim to know anything about being a "tramp" or anything that Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone' says. I speak from experience when I say that anyone who hasn't had their heart broken, went hungry for most of a day, or woken up to puke and then went back to bed to sleep off the rest of a hangover has nothing to say. Nothing. Look at that album cover, a group of middle-to-upper class teens who think suffering is having their cellphone taken away in class.

And the conceit of having an "encore" version of a song is almost too much.

Of course, let me make clear that their music is no good either. Unless you're really into high school pop/punk bands...And even if you are, you're better off picking up a cheap used copy of Enema Of The State at your local independent record store and pretending you're buying it as a joke.

Lil' Indie Round-Up 5

Mommy yes, the Lil Indie Round-Up returns!!
Album: Firelight by The Coral Sea
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Well, it's probably supposed to be some intense torch given the periodic table of elements look of the album title and band name, but to me it sorta looks like a sparkler. So, I dunno: brainy indie rock about chemistry equations??
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Chilly post rock atmospherics (our guitars have a lot of delay and reverb, dude) meet warm, spiky indie rock. With keyboards/piano thrown in for good measure from time to time. This is actually a pretty good album if rather unexceptional. This is a case where the band has their sound down but the songs just aren't there.
Album: Chandeliers by The Boat People
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Well, the intention is clearly to give you the impression of something soft, natural, and pretty. My guess is it's something minimalist--maybe all instrumental, even.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: What we have here is excellent indie pop from Australia. Between it and New Zealand, they're threatening to take the indie pop crown away from Britain and the U.S. This band may not have the most original sound in the world but they have great songs and the hooks embed themselves in you quite nicely. A heaping helping of Belle & Sebastian and a few spoonfuls of harder edged American indie pop, good sir or madam??
Album: Soho Lights by Tat
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Well, other than the fact that I can't get the image to display with the proper colors, it makes me expect something obnoxious and profane. Tat is an exceedingly stupid name for a band, and the album title is a cheeky, insidery New York kind of thing that irks me to no end.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Remember in the mid 90s, when alternative rock was boiled down to a lame halfway point between the pop/punk of Green Day and the ultra generic, watered down grunge rock of bands everyone has forgotten?? This is that, only with a girl singer. And they're from England but you would never know it and they should know better.
Album: Bedroom Superstars by Scarlet Blonde
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Given the musical equipment on display, it's probably some awful bedroom laptop pop affair.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: If there were ever a Massive Attack, Everything But The Girl, and Bjork cover band, and that band went on to write original songs, it would probably sound like this. A very English-y electro-soul pop album with some experimental electronic edges. The singer has got a really nice voice, certainly, and the music/production backing her is good, but those two things don't add up to much and the whole thing is rather unexceptional. Not bad, not good.
Album: Fools Want Noise by Oh My God
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: "Dude, you remember that movie, 'Monkey Shines'?! Let's write an album and have that on the cover!!"
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Think of the most uninspired hard rock you can. This album sounds like that. It's all the hardest rocking but at the same time least good Foo Fighters songs in one place, and the most interesting thing about this band is the backstory of how they got in a car accident before it was released. I'm sorry for that, and I know the band put a lot of work into this, but I don't grade on effort or hardship. Shitty music is shitty music no matter what.
Album: The Kindness Kind by The Kindness King
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: I think someone fell asleep in art class and hurriedly made this cover after having a dream about gay sex and cough syrup. This roughly approximates my idea of what the album sounds like: gay sex on cough syrup. Which is to say, awesome.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: This isn't half bad. This band's got one of those powerful, melodic PJ Harvey type of female singers. This is perfectly competent but forgettable indie rock with a handful of electronic touches. A decent album but the band don't do enough to make themselves unique. The best song here--'A New Sense'--basically sounds like a cover of a Spoon song.
Album: Bittersweet Batch by Jesse Dee
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: You probably can't read it, but the little bit in the corner says 'Almost Exclusively In Stereo.' So I expect some kind of retro revivalist throwback like the new wave of garage rock bands in the early years of this decade.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: It's a white boy with a big ol' soulful voice, set to an appropriately soulful/funky backing. I'll cut to the chase and say that for what this album is trying to do, it's actually very good. However, I never go for these kind of genre pastiches because it doesn't give the artist much room to grow. Unless he changes his sound a lot, it's just going to be an entire career of stuff like this, and who really needs three white boy soul albums?? Hell, I don't even need one.
Album: You're Being Watched by Fugitive Kind
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Ooooh, it's all neon. Kinda like Electric Warrior by T. Rex, yeah?? Something tells me this isn't as good, though. I mean, the only band I can think of who got away with showing their gear on the cover was Battles.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Like so many bands I end up reviewing in this column, Fugitive Kind exemplify the truism that just having some instruments and a 'sound' is worthless without good songs or inventiveness. This band features neither good songs nor anything inventive. Instead, it's ultra generic alternative rock with an over-reaching, show offy female singer who writes the kind of lyrics you filled notebooks with and then left at home when you got into college. I mean seriously, "I wanna hold my breath/just to see/if it feels like I'm alive"??
Album: Hannah by The Age of Rockets
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: I appreciate the old timey look of this. Coupled with the band's name, I'll guess it's some kind of old timey, "singing about the 19th century and early 20th century" band, like the Decemberists only nowhere near as good.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: The press blurb included with my copy of this album compares them to The Postal Service, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be The Postal Service. The music has that same indie-electro-pop sound and most of the time the singer is so eerily close to Ben Gibbard I wouldn't be surprised to find out they were twins...or clones. I also detect a dash of The Flaming Lips circa The Soft Bulletin but mainly in the (over)use of big choruses of voices. Or it could just be that the whole thing reminds me of The Postal Service's cover of The Flaming Lips song, 'Suddenly Everything Has Changed', a song from The Soft Bulletin. Whoops, looks like The Postal Service has you beat there, too...

Lil' Indie Round-Up 4

Album: Angels and Demons, Space and Time by Hypatia Lake
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: This cover reminds me of something a high school art student might do to raise controversy at her school. Or post on her DeviantArt page. Either way, it looks amateurish and stupid, and not in that awesome, minimalist, and iconic Daniel Johnston kind of way. So, I'm expecting ham fisted gothy rock.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: While it's admirable for bands to have a sound that can accommodate so many different sounds, the important thing is that they do it well. Hypatia Lake do not do it well. Yes, it's impressive that this album has prog rock, folk, psychedelia, noise rock, and a few tracks that remind me of REM circa Monster, but none of it is done well and it makes the album a fucking mess instead of a coherent work. Meanwhile, the band really wish they were alive in the 70s, when the ridiculous concept of this album (for a baffled laugh, go read up on what the band and the overarching 'story' of their albums are about) might have flown.

Album: La La Land by Wax Fang
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Let's be frank here; let's not mince words, and just get right down to it: this is a terrible cover. It's the kind of thing you might make as a joke to piss off a record label or in case you don't want anyone to buy your album, ever. Seriously. I'm all for kitsch and randomness and absurdity, but this is awful. What I expect from this is a really adolescent punk band with neither imagination nor skill.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: You know, not bad. It's not punk rock, let's clear that up right away. Rather it's more akin to the distinctive sound of mid 70s rock, warm-but-distorted guitars and all. The singer sounds like a combination of Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes and David Bowie, too, which makes it a strange beast. All in all, it's pitched somewhere between Brian Eno's mid 70s solo albums (but not as experimental) and how Pink Floyd sounded on the more rocking tracks from The Wall (but not as good). While La La Land is not a bad album, there isn't enough unique stuff about it to get me excited enough to completely recommend it.
Album: Waves On Waves by Waves On Waves
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: What a garish mess. I don't want to come off as a homophobe, but this cover reminds me of the self-consciously weird fashion photo shoots involving gay men that I randomly came across while flipping through fashion magazines while bored in bookstores waiting for ex-girlfriends to check out. Thus, I pretty much expect glammy piano driven rock a la the Scissor Sisters.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: A lot of 80s pop music has a sound to it that always makes me think of nightclubs and parties held by the upper crust of New York society. It's not even always dance music but it just sounds like it belongs in a dance club, you know?? That's what Waves On Waves sound like: 80s pop music, but recorded with a modern sheen and production techniques, so it's also vaguely-spacey-at-times pop/rock. Some of the song titles are genuinely terrible, too--witness 'U Moved Me In2 The Future' and 'We Want 2'--which is always a bonus. I should mention that I hate this kind of 80s coke party, vaguely gay, dance clubby kind of music and just move on.

Album: John Eichleay by John Eichleay
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Using your name for your 'band' and your album title usually implies one thing: singer/songwriter. Otherwise, this cover is vague enough to be nearly anything.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Competent, incredibly faceless pop/rock, with terrible lyrics. Like most singer/songwriters who dabble in other genres--in this case, country-rock ('Great Love'), ska ('Countdown'), and Southern Fried boogie ('Subway Shuffle')--they manage to do so with skill but little personality or invention. John Eichleay also bears the disadvantage of really bad lyrics, which trot out such trite, unoriginal sentiments no one could sue him for plagiarism because there are a million other songs saying the same things in the same ways.
Album: Leavetaking by Peter Bradley Adams
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: A badly drawn owl?? OK. Owls are generally symbolic of the country and rural-ness. Meanwhile, Leavetaking is the kind of odd turn-of-phrase that people who write a lot of poems/lyrics fixate on. All signs point to country-ish singer/songwriter music, fit for coffeehouses and the record collections of intensely uninteresting people.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: I was really close. Leavetaking is a pleasant, totally unmemorable singer/songwriter album in a crowded field. There's nothing inherently wrong with this music, but there's simply so much of it that sounds so much alike that it's hard to care. You really need something--a voice, songwriting, instrumentation, etc.--to set you apart, and Peter Bradley Adams doesn't have it. Still, it'd be a nice album to overdose on sleeping pills to, or as background music for bedding a vapid co-ed who thinks Jack Johnson is too challenging.
Album: Re-Education by Rurik
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Something about the band's name and the cover itself makes me expect a techno or techno pop sound. Call it a hunch.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: A slightly-more-deeply-voiced Weird Al leads a band who can't decide if they're synth pop, pop punk via Good Charlotte, ora long forgotten one hit wonder of late 90s alt. rock. Being unique does not automatically make you good, and while this may come off as needlessly vindictive, I have no problem with telling you that this album is incredibly irritating and I truly regret the time I wasted listening to it.

Lil' Indie Round-Up 3

Album: Chandelier by Rachael Sage
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: When the whole singer/songwriter thing got really big in the 70s, you could pretty much set your watch to each artist releasing an album at least every two years. And that album would have some obscure, clever object, idea, or word as its title. Also, the cover would typically be said artist posing with the object or making a visual reference to it somehow. So, then, this makes me expect a fairly generic singer/songwriter album. p.s. I don't know why it's showing up all blued out like that. Some quirk of Blogger, I guess.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Tori Amos says "hi." Too pleasant to hate, too cutesy, quirky, and immaculate to like, Chandelier is Sage's 8th (!!) album. All in all, it's piano-driven singer/songwriter pop in the Amos-vein, only less challenging and intense. If I had a girlfriend and she was making this music, I would be touched and proud of her, but secretly have no desire to listen to it, ever.

Album: The Discovery EP by The Discovery
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: OK, you've seen the cover now. Doesn't it scream 'high school art project from the stoner kid in class'?? I would also accept the answer 'fan made cover for almost any Flaming Lips album.' So, I expect something druggy, psychedelic, or cosmic, maaaaan.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: This one took me awhile to sum up, despite being only 4 songs, but I think I've nailed it--acoustic 311. Granted, I haven't listened to any 311 in a good 10 years, but that's the vibe I got off this: reggae/Latin influences married to generic alt. rock. The twist here is that The Discovery have added a cup more acoustic guitar. Oh, and the last song 'In The Air Tonight' lamely lifts most of the chorus to that Phil Collins song and is half as good.
Album: The Revisionists by The Revisionists
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: The Revisionists is such a vague, wants-to-be-cool-but-is-just-kind-of-forgettable name for a band. And the cover reminds me of the similar monikered Editors, which features a skeletal outline of a building. Here, though, we get a scrawl of newspaper clippings in various languages. All of this leads me to believe the band is one of those millions of "back to basics" punk bands that are on the Warped Tour for a year and then completely forgotten.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Well, I don't hate this, so that's already a point in its favor. Also, it's not a "back to basics" punk band. No, it's a "back to basics" post-punk band, only more Clash-y. Literature given with the album reveals that two thirds of the band were in Tonic (they of the mid-90s alt. rock hit "If You Could Only See") and the other third is the guy who directed the Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. Anyway, this is the sort of music that marries 90s alt. rock with late 70s post-punk via the Clash, music that I wouldn't flee from if it were played in a bar, but music that is supremely boring to sit down and listen to.
Album: Blackmarket EP by Blackmarket
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Somewhere, somebody listened to a lot of Fugazi and decided to make an album cover that reflected this obsession. Given the band's name, a potently political/economic term, alongside the blur of things going on here visually, I expect Fugazi.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Let me pose a scenario to you. Imagine if, instead of recording the harder, stranger Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo led Weezer, post-Blue Album, to head off the subsequent pack of mid-to-late 90s rock bands inspired equally by indie rock and arena rock and start churning out crap right away. Instead of doing what he actually did, and going off to college, then coming back to ruin Weezer's good name by, apparently, challenging himself to make a series of albums that are each worse than the one that came before. But I digress. Since this scenario never happened, we get to listen to bands like Blackmarket instead. Blackmarket are terrible.
Album: Siege Mentality by Digital Primate
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Ever since Gorillaz were unleashed unto the world, England has been inundated with bands that mix rock, electronic music, and hip hop, and have silly names or themes around them. The mock 8-bit NES gorilla mask pictured above leads me to believe this particular release leans toward the electronic music realm, since many electronic artists have a similar kitschy appreciation for that visual aesthetic.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: I was pretty close with my guess, except that I hadn't factored in the bizarre political slant of the album. Or all the sexual stuff. Frankly, the song titles alone are pretty embarassing, and that it's apparently a white guy behind all this is even worse. Like most British albums of this type, it's overly long, and reminds you of much better bands that you don't even really like (in this case, I'd say a more electro-hop Gorillaz, or simply a worse Basement Jaxx).
Album: Pigs by The Dirty Hearts
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: In the late 90s, I remember always going to my local Media Play store and wandering the racks of CDs. Every so often I'd come across some album cover that was really disturbing or gross. Usually it had something violent, provocative, or sexual, and it seemed like it was usually on Trent Reznor's Nothing Records label. It also seemed as though they usually had some vague bestiality angle, too. So, then, this cover, which has a human infant gestating inside a pig. It's vaguely disturbing, but it also is a lazy, lazy visual symbol for human beings as "pigs." I expect passable industrial rock.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: I like this album, if only because it reminds one of a time in the early 90s when garage rock made a short lived, under covered comeback. Bands like The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion didn't really fit in with the grunge rock or indie rock of that era, and so existed in this weird place that never really made sense. The Dirty Hearts are of this era, too, despite being a decade and change too late. Even the amateurish back cover, a collage of meat products, reminds me of something, say, Pavement would've had on a pre-Slanted & Enchanted single or EP. As for the music itself, it straddles the lines between grunge rock, indie rock, and garage rock, featuring songs that go on a minute too long and sometimes throw in odd elements like a brass section.
Album: Falcon EP by Falcon
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Right now, I work at the deli/meat department in a local grocery store. One of the brands of lunch meat and cheese we carry is called Boar's Head. It's a relatively 'premium' brand, which costs a dollar or two more per pound than the competitors, but I much prefer it. Their havarti is delicious. Huh?? Oh, right; this album cover. It's got a bloody boar's head on it, but the band's name is Falcon. Expectation?? Overly clever indie pop, or painful, room clearing metal/noise.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Passable, enjoyable indie rock with an optimistic, anthemic streak. The big deal about this band is that they're slowly recording the songs of a high school classmate who wrote hundreds of tunes over roughly a year's time in the late 80s before being institutionalized. Shades of Daniel Johnston, right?? Unfortunately, this is a band where the concept behind them is more interesting than the music itself. It's not bad by any means, mind you, but I think people are more willing to write genius into a musician because he or she was crazy, and that's unfair. If you hear the songs of Daniel Johnston out of context, they're still amazing because they're so well written, and his voice is so unique. Not so for Falcon. The story is more special than the music, and I'd be more excited to hear the original versions.
Album: The Sound by Mar
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: I'm going to be a jerk and say that this cover is terrible, and it's not even ironically terrible. It's got an old timey looking woman with angels exploding out of her head, suggesting that this band's sound is so amazing it caused cherubs to fountain out of her head. Did I just use 'fountain' as a verb?? I did. Anyway, I'm guessing this album sounds like Snow Patrol, one of those bands that tried to combine post-rock and indie rock together and wind up sounding like crap in the process.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Wow, I was pretty close. Only the post-rock is more like a string based Sigur Ros, and the indie rock is more like an American guy who likes Radiohead a lot and wishes his voice could go as high and powerful as Thom Yorke. I may sound cynical here, but Mar belong to a raft of bands that try so hard to be unique and interesting but end up sounding like a patchwork of various other bands. I can't hate them for it, because I remember times when I used to ape various writers, but that doesn't mean I like them for it, either.