Labels: Textbook
Review by: Damien Mills
So yet more ex-members ‘supergroup’ based wackiness on this, with Solea featuring guys from Knapsack, Samiam and of course Texas is the Reason, all of whom are amongst some of my favourite bands. Out of those this probably sounds most like TITR though its alot more straight up ‘rock’ than that, it’s also actually pretty impressive.
After a few false starts it’s nice to be able to report that this record is finally starting to show the bands pedigree, consisting of eleven great, catchy, summery and re-assuringly unpretentious indie rock songs, and if you lost interest in Garrett Klahn after New Rising Sons country influenced rock-god-wannabe-fruitiness then this will hopefully bring you kicking and screaming back. It’s also good to hear some old guard guys doing the melodic pop thing without being too commercial and trendy, or alternatively, going too far the other way into some ill-conceived artrock shite.
The only real gripe i can think of with this is that some of the songs have been re-used a bit to much (‘shuffle’ now being on 3 of their 4 releases) but it’s only a minor thing really and some of that stuff I guess has been a bit hard to track down.
Recommended say I.