Labels: City Slang
Review by: Andy Malcolm
I guess bands like Built to Spill and Superchunk are at the level now that Jejune and Rainer Maria will probably be a couple of years down the line, provided they don’t split up or go all funny. Reviews in the NME and all that jazz. Ooh, mainstream!
So I really like this record then. It’s more of that indie rock stuff, with nice poppy, hummable tunes to wedge inside your face, all spurred on by catchy guitars that aren’t just straight forward and predictable boredom like Stereophonics or any of the UK’s indie ‘gods’. Sure, you could probably say there was a Beatles influence, but that’s pretty much de riguer for an indie rock band.
I got a 7″ of these guys a while back which had the song “Center of the Universe” on, and I kind of thought it dull. But it’s back here on this album and I’m much more appreciative now. I guess it needed the company of the other songs to fit. The other 7″ I have from them is a couple of years old, but has 2 great songs on it, and they use violins and stuff coming off sounding way Beatlesy one on of them. No strings attached here though, which is kind of odd because I can see they’d fit perfectly on certain tracks.
So, on the offchance that you haven’t heard B2S, the only ref’s I can over you would be that if you like Superchunk, you will more than likely rock out to the sounds on this 180mg slab. And if you like Silver Scooter you will definitely nod a long to this record. But hey, you must be some kind of weirdo freak if you’ve heard Silver Scooter and not this ininitely more ‘known’ band.
10 songs, yup yup. I’m glad I finally got around to picking this up.