Labels: Deep Elm
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Seriously! This is indie rock! Nothing else is! This is me babbling a bit about 12 bands.
Maxel Toft – Instrumental stuff which has electronic bits and they probably heard Can once. I am not really interested in the vast array of instrumental music that is out there. This is not bad though, it passes my key ‘instrumental music test’: it doesn’t sound like it badly needs vocals. It has a sample of a dude talking though at one point.
Jena Berlin – Initially this is pretty catchy and melodic indie rock. Couldn’t abide the bad screamy vocals though. Nor the grungey main guy. Nor the fiddly alt-rock bits. Nor the fact that its almost 5 minutes long. Kind of reminded me of Far.
Meredith Bragg – a girl with an acoustic guitar, I’m not really interested.
The New Lows – nice twinkly intro, these folks play decent low-key indie rock that builds up nicely to a rockout at the end. Slow burning, repetitious and similar to older Death Cab for Cutie type stuff. Good.
Cameran – I saw this band play live once in about 1999? No idea they were still going. This Austrian band do a solid brand of rocking post-hardcore with some emo elements. Nice distorted guitars and variation in vocals. This song really gets its groove on. Another good un.
Sedona – some boys singing and plucking guitars. They’ve heard some old records that their parents have. Hand claps too. Meh.
The Forecast – pisspoor MTVmo with whiney vocals and bits borrowed from terrible Get Up Kids songs. Generic song structure abounds. Catchy, melodic, fucking garbage.
Death Ships – acoustic guitar and a backing band. Nice vocals, this is better than I was expecting actually when it started.
the Silent Press – uhoh, MTVmo vocals alert. Then in comes the guitar and its a mid-paced indie rock bore of a song that is also a bit messy in a not good way.
The Call Up – comedy vocals from this awful alt-rock band. Owee. “I WANNA FEEL ALIVE IN MY HEART”. You know how bad Hot Water Music are these days? The Call Up are like that, but actually worse. For reals.
Nature Living – Oh yeah! Pinch that Braid riff! Playing a cello or something underneath it won’t help. Nice soft vocals, this is basically like Jimmy Eat World crossed with Braid. This band are Japanese, so maybe they are more influenced by Wall or Three Minute Movie. And this song is dead nice, apart from the bad screamy stuff they put in. This is my favourite song on this comp. Catchy and fun.
Bernard – a band called Bernard? Man alive. Piano goes under very soft and sombre indie rock. With annoying high pitched vocals like Muse. At 7:27 minutes, someone will call this epic. I will call it too fucking long by about 7 and a half minutes.
Overall, I thought this was a fairly mediocre comp, but Cameran, the New Lows and Nature Living all have really good songs on here, and are worth a check if you’re into the kind of stuff they do.