Author: Jeff Giles (Page 33 of 41)

The Rescues: Crazy Ever After

September 5, 2008 / Jeff Giles

Their press materials use the phrase “indie supergroup,” which is a bit of a stretch – of the three members of the Rescues, you’re liable to recognize only Gabriel Mann’s name, and that’s only if you’ve spent a fair amount of time trawling CD Baby and its kin for unsigned singer/songwriter types – but puffed-up verbiage aside, if you’re at all into introspective, harmony-fueled acts, you’ll want to look into getting yourself a copy of Crazy Ever After right away. The Rescues’ songs are frustratingly uneven – the album veers from strong stuff like opening track “Lost Along the Way,” which sounds like something Fleetwood Mac’s younger cousins would cook up, to mopey coffeehouse tracks like the interminable “California Rain” – but when the trio is on, they’re eminently listenable; it isn’t hard to hear what soundtrack supervisors see in the band. (They’ve already been tapped for “Superhero Movie,” “Igor,” “Army Wives,” and “The Lucky Ones.”) The album’s lack of consistency is particularly aggravating, given that all three of the Rescues made their bones as songwriters, and pooling their material should have been more satisfying than this. All in all, though, not a bad debut, and it’ll be interesting to see where they go from here. (Red Wind 2008)

The Rescues MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop

Amy MacDonald: This Is the Life

September 5, 2008 / Jeff Giles

The year has already brought a bumper crop of female nouveau-soul singers from the United Kingdom – and they’re still coming: Meet Amy MacDonald, the Scottish chanteuse whose debut has already spun off a handful of hit singles and moved a million units across the pond. The timing of This Is the Life’s release will provoke comparisons to Duffy and Adele, but vocally, MacDonald bears more of a resemblance to Dolores O’Riordan, with a little Kirsty MacColl and Sinéad Lohan thrown in for good measure, blended with acoustic guitar-based singer/songwriter arrangements. All these other names are helpful for providing musical points of reference, but they also do a fair job of summing up MacDonald’s main problem – namely, her music does a better job of evoking others’ than it does of standing on its own. Her songs are agreeable enough, particularly the quieter ones, but none of them are particularly memorable. (Decca will also have its work cut out for itself when it comes to promoting such oh-so-British tracks as “Footballer’s Wife.”) Still, if she lacks the sort of killer first single that peers such as Adele have enjoyed, MacDonald does boast a quiet consistency entirely in keeping with her album’s muted, ‘70s-inspired artwork. One to keep an ear on. (Decca 2008)

Amy MacDonald MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Pop

The Mood: Synaesthesia

September 5, 2008 / Jeff Giles

Everything about this album, from the band’s name to the vaguely Talking Heads-ish artwork to the title, suggests snobbishly arty postmodern pop – but the Mood’s Synaesthesia is actually a breezy six-song chunk of good old-fashioned power pop, with tracks such as “Eskimo Scientist” aimed right at the pleasure centers of music fans who still fondly reminisce about bygone groups like Gladhands or Summercamp. Of course, this stuff never sells worth a damn, so the EP is destined to whisper quickly into dust-covered obscurity, only to be pored over by pop nerds years from now…like, say, Gladhands’ La Di Da. Nothing here approaches the classic greatness of that album, but it’s cut from mostly the same cloth, and so few bands are doing this sort of thing anymore that it’s hard not to snap your fingers and bob along. Too short to wear out its welcome and too catchy to resist, Synaesthesia offers up a perfectly serviceable soundtrack to brief end-of-summer barbecues. If there’s a real knock against the EP, it’s that the material is good, but never great — with a few truly stellar songs, who knows what they could do? (Outright Rock 2008)

The Mood MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Power Pop

Goldcure: Portuguese Prince

August 22, 2008 / Jeff Giles

You might think Goldcure is sort of a silly name for a band – and you’d be right – but when you stop to consider that these guys used to call themselves Lillylock Timber, it doesn’t sound so bad after all. The Austin four-piece’s debut album, Portuguese Prince (names are clearly not this band’s strong suit) tries to wed Wilco, Travis, the Verve, U2, and the Beach Boys; as you might imagine, it comes nowhere near achieving its goals, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad album. In fact, it’s actually surprisingly good – what comes across at first as a rather generic first effort reveals itself, after repeated listens, as a deceptively simple collection of 21st century classic rock songs. The band’s got a knack for stately, slow-building anthems, ringing harmonies, and wide open arrangements – and they lucked out in landing Austin legend Stephen Doster behind the decks, too. Doster, who was working with Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott at the time of his death, says he heard “unfinished business” when he listened to Goldcure – which, as any self-respecting rock nerd could tell you, is pretty heavy praise for a baby band. Damn if they don’t hold up underneath it, though. Goldcure lacks the immediate power of its influences, but give ‘em a few years – and a few more songs like “Rubber Inside” and “Lucky to See” – and they might just get there. (Sorin 2008)

Goldcure MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Rock

Brice Woodall and the Positrons: Sine Wave Sea

August 22, 2008 / Jeff Giles

They’ve been compared to Radiohead and Wilco, but the only thing Brice Woodall and the Positrons really have in common with either of those bands is that you never really know what they’re going to do next – chords, melodies, and beats are all relative down here in the Sine Wave Sea, and trying to piece together a cogent narrative out of the lyrics is not for the faint of heart. But if they’re guilty of occasionally being too cute for their own good, they’re at least original, and how many times can you say that in pop music? Although it’s hard not to wish they’d stop trying so hard once in a while, or at least come up with something resembling a hook, it’s equally difficult not to respect all the hard work and/or large amounts of interplanetary travel that must have gone into these 11 songs. You can’t dance to it, and it’s only pop music in the loosest sense of the term – in fact, it’s hard to determine just what kind of music it is – but if you’re in the mood to drop in and get way out, you could certainly do worse than Sine Wave Sea. (AEMMP 2008)

Brice Woodall MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Rock