The 88
Not Only … But Also
(3.5 out of 5 stars)
pop/rock
The 88’s new album, Not Only … But Also, radiates “cool.”
The band’s sound is similar to other pop-rock bands that hail from Los Angeles; the trio’s high-energy pop/rock sound is reminiscent of bands like Rooney and, at times, Dublin’s The Thrills.
There’s also a lackadaisical feel to the album. Every song sounds like it would be perfectly at home in the background of a rerun of The O.C. (this theory was proved true after further research — one of the band’s songs actually was featured on the show).
The band shows a slight amount of versatility between songs, which vary between fast paced love songs and, well, more laid back love songs.
There’s an occasional lamentation of loss, a tried-and-true subject within pop music, but love seems to be the main theme for album.
However, the opening song, “Go Go Go,” is the only one that seems to break free of the pro-love mold. Frenetically fast, it concerns an unfulfilling relationship in which the singer Keith Slettedahl proclaims, “I will call you when I wanna/I will call you when I can/I don’t care if you get lonely.”
The fact that the next song is entitled “Love You Anytime” — and that many similar songs follow — cancels out that initial attempt at showing off a tougher edge.
Despite a lack of variety in subject material, the album is still entertaining; the melodies are catchy and might produce spontaneous urges within the listener to dance dorkily about their room.
- Cassie Perez
Rogue Motel
Daylight Breaking
(3.5 out of 5 stars)
pop/rock
Rogue Motel creates the soundtrack for the characters of a nighttime soap. Their lives are falling to pieces around them as the brooding characters try to regain any semblance to the life they hoped to have.
Possibly sitting at the bar, driving alone or sitting by the water, the music fills the space of their solitude as it does for listeners, captures their hearts and propels them forward into their next staged reaction of rushing to their loved one, forgiving someone or simply leaving that empty place to return home.
The band, originally from the Northwest, met in Lexington, Ky., to put together Daylight Breaking. “We cut ‘Fault’ that night”, singer Matthew Kendall remembers in a quote on the band’s Web site, “and I think you can hear it in the energy of that track, everyone was working really hard to find the right place, getting to know each other musically through recording was really special.”
“Fault” is not the only track on the album in which Kendall’s voice captures the attention of listeners. Paired with understated guitar, drums and other instruments, Kendall’s voice captures the hopes, dreams, shortcomings and misunderstood feelings of everyday people, as he sings with the heart-felt voice of a man who clearly has walked a similar journey.
The raw emotion galvanizes listeners together on the first track “Hurry Up,” as he sings, “I’ve been looking for a way to ease my pain.”
Despite the standard pop-rock sound, the album doesn’t lose the focus of the first track, and the energy Kendall speaks of permeates everywhere, expressing a longing for closure and happiness that most any listener should relate to.
- Rachel Arnett
Eric Wilson and Empty Hearts
Quarterfuse
(3.5 out of 5 stars)
country
If nothing else, Eric Wilson has heart. And a lot of it.
“Two boot pairs and three states ago I left my home,” he sings to open Quarterfuse, the impressive debut from Wilson and his band, Empty Hearts.
Recalling the early days of Whiskeytown, the group mixes flourishes of steel guitar with the occasional — but always effective — guitar solo to achieve heart wrenching results.
But, unlike many alt-country contemporaries, the band seems to tie itself to the roots of country.
With lyrics like, “Growin’ wasn’t easy for this coal miner’s boy/But life is harder now that I’m old,” the band draws a line straight back to the roots of the genre, a move that could come off as forced, but the earnestness of Wilson’s voice makes sure that doesn’t happen.
Like all good country music, Quarterfuse is painfully honest, incredibly relatable and heartfelt.
-Jamie Williams
Tom Gabel
Heart Burns
(2 out of 5 stars)
Modern Rock
In a world where Bad Company’s Paul Rogers is the new front man for Queen and Led Zeppelin has been rumored to be replacing Robert Plant with the former singer of Alter Bridge (yes, the band that formed in the ashes of Creed), it’s easy to interpret the new solo EP from Against Me!’s Tom Gabel as a tryout to be the next transplanted head of a formerly formidable outfit.
Throughout the record, the punk stalwart tries on different styles of popular music, most of which don’t fit him at all.
On three piano-tinged folk tracks with arrangements which float along so blandly that they garner the same reaction as the buzz from an air conditioner, Gabel sounds less like a punk legend and more like Billy Idol.
And while it’s hard to hear such whitewashed muck from a former hero, there are a few suits here that actually fit.
“Random Hearts” chugs along with lock-step guitars and drum machines that suggest what Beck might sound like if he was informed more by punk then folk,.
And “Anna Is A Stool Pigeon” steals the rhythmic interchanges and harmonica of the E Street Band to relate a stark saga of foiled revolutionaries.
But like all the bands Gabel seeks to put his own spin on, the E Street Band already has a front man, and together they make music that’s head and shoulders better than anything here.
-Jordan Lawrence
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