Labels: Deep Elm
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Subtitled “The best bands you’ve never heard”! I hope not, because I have never heard many bands from music history, like some amazing jazz bands or blues
singer or vital hip hop record or whatever. I mean, probably a lot of people who buy this wouldn’t have heard of say, Can, for example. And the bands on this
CD are better than Can? Ha ha! Good one! Anyway, enough of my tired pedantry. Deep Elm have a sense of humour, I know that now, via e-mails and the fact that
they persist in sending their comps for review. And I appreciate that. I also appreciate that they have stopped calling the music they put out emo. Anyway.
Let me run through the 12 tracks on here and write some words about each one.
The Pit That Became A Tower have a pretty terrible name, and they make a solid song that sounds like Jets to Brazil. There are worse bands to sound like
aren’t there (well, maybe not for some people, but I liked that Orange Rhyming Dictionary LP a whole lot). Clair De Lune follow them up with a track that
reminds me of some of the solid post-hardcore rockers that bounces around like At the Drive In, nowt too original but they don’t fuck it up. Seems to drag
once it gets to the 3 minute mark though when they go all indie prog or something. The Blind King (you’d think he’d stand aside for the One Eyed Man really),
make generic as all bollocks indie pop with electronic drum beats, strummed guitars and slacker vocals. Meh. Death Cab For Cutie have a lot to answer for,
and there by default, so do Built to Spill. Man. Dull. Dino Velvet are another band that appear to be big fans of ATDI, they decide to mimic the vocals too.
Whoops. They strut and sass and oh here is a bendy mathy bit with screamy backups. God. Boring. It’s a mishmash of various styles and it doesn’t work.
Second Hand Stories are nice and laidback indie strummers that probably enjoy the work of the likes of Bright Eyes. Nice but barely noticeable. I mean, when
you live in a world where you can listen to Simon and Garfunkel or Second Hand Stories, you know what you really should choose, even if Second Hand Stories
do have things like backward vocal bits. Throat are up next. They sound like a cheesy rock band that nicked a couple of Drive Like Jehu riffs. Hot Snakes do
that way better, although this is very catchy, fun and they have some bits that sound like good era Get Up Kids. Winter in Alaska sound like they may
actually have heard Mineral at some point, which makes a change. The twinkling music that builds into noisier parts is pretty good. Sadly I am not so taken
by the wobbly vocals, the guy is very wimpy but not in a nice Chris Simpson type way. Anyway, this is ok, pretty sweeping and epic, but, really, stick with
Mineral or that first Gloria Record EP because they’re that much better that it’s not even funny. Joanna Erdos plays a piano and sings, not entirely my
thang.
Siva are another band that appreciates ATDI. They shout and play rock music. Lakota play melodic cheeseball rock stuff that is like not so good era Get Up
Kids with stronger vocals. Thought bands like this had died out. Leaving Rouge are nice, they play a downbeat, atmospheric indie rock / post-emo thing with
some piano added in. Probably my favourite track on here. The diabolically named the KidCrash sound like they are big stillgoodbutgoingbad era Get Up Kids
fans, but I can’t abide the dodgy vocals and Blink182 backups. This is a pretty nice and twinkly (reminds of Owen at times!) indie rocker though.
Alas, because I am a jaded old fart and have heard all the tracks on this record done better the first time around I can not really recommend this compilation. If you however do not
own a record by Jets to Brazil, At the Drive In, Death Cab for Cutie, Get Up Kids, Mineral or Drive Like Jehu, and you like indie rock, then you might like
to get this.