Labels: Boss Tuneage
Review by: Mike Whelan
Not typical Boss Tuneage fare this, I was expecting pop-punk brattiness meets, er, more pop-punk brattiness, but this is actually quite refined.
Sylvie play a sort of music that is becoming rather ubiquitous. They sound like Sunny Day Real Estate or Texas is the Reason and hark back to an era when the word “emo” didn’t attract howls of derision and conjur up images of spotty kids crying in their fetid bedrooms. As such, it’s quite good, but with so many bands plying their trade with this style (most notably Michael and Lewis) Sylvie need to do something special to stand out from the crowd.
And while tracks like “Smoke and Mirrors’ and “Park Bench’ stand out, there are plenty of tracks on “I Wish I Was Driving,’ like “Train Wreck’ and “Slide Show,’ which lend nothing to the record except a few extra minutes.
It’s easy to use all kinds of clichés to describe Sylvie. I could say it’s “deeply layered” or that there are “soaring vocals,” but in the end, it would still be no clearer. Sunny Day Real Estate is a phrase which should sum it up perfectly.
Overall, “I Wish I Was Driving’ is a bit hit and miss. The good tracks are great, the poor ones are just boring. Still, if you miss SDRE then give it a go, you can’t really go wrong with just one more album like this on your shelf.