Labels: Deep Elm
Review by: Andy Malcolm
*THIS* is how to make comps. 13 songs previously unavailable or on limited 7″ only, 13 bands (plus a bonus track). And dammit, I can barely find a fault anywhere – it’s great from start to finish. OK, so it is a full price CD rather than a budget sampler, but I’ll tell you now: W.O.R.T.H.-.I.T.
Basically, it’s a whole bunch of emo rock. You can’t go wrong with this style done well. Pop Unknown feature members of Mineral if I remember rightly, and they kick things off with some spellbinding, downbeat emo rock. Excellent stuff. “Max” is the 2nd Appleseed Cast song I’ve heard now, and it strengthens my need to get their album. Like a good number of bands on here, they’ve got a bit of Sunny Day Real Estate about them, doing the quiet / noisy thing. Seven Storey Mountain rock out with some pretty heavy guitars and then the slower bits, and I think the singer reminds of Tears for Fears or some other 80’s band. Yikes! Blacktop Cadence strike me as a slower “Hot Water Music”, it’s the twin vocals that do it. Buford are more pop punk than emo, with a fast driving style, and the Jazz June do a rocking, slightly Chamberlainy thing with powerful vocals, whilst Plain are almost straight-ahead rock. Probably the weakest track on here – good the first couple of listens, but gets annoying. Magstatic are also quite ‘rock’, but their singer sounds like a he’s actually a girl, so I’ll let them off. Nearly there, bear with me. “My Favourite Citizen” have a truly joyous and bouncy bass guitar sound that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags you a long. Splendid, especially when they rock it up a bit. The singer guy reminded me of Mid Carson July, I even checked to see if they shared band members. Finally. I’d use the word pretty to describe Strike Force. Awesome female vocals, it’s very laidback, soothing and totally nice to listen to. Even gets going a bit at times. One of the standouts.
Well, nearly every track is great, I’d get album sby almost all these bands if I could find them, and this is the rare case of a comp. I’ll still be listening to all the way through next week.
Melodic? Rock? Emo? This for you.