Labels: Parks & Records
Review by: Alex Deller
Erm. For some reason I was thinking this would be something heavy and Shotmakerish with those great clunky basslines and splintering guitar parts. Unfortunately, though, it’s actually some kind of reasonably accomplished indie rock, often earnest and breathy and akin to Modest Mouse or TV On The Radio without the songs or, at its most miserable, something kicking at the floor with delusions of Kepler’s muted grandeur. Things get kinda weird and less standard the deeper you wade in, though, with “Boatful Of Buckeyes’ tossing in bimbling keys robbed from an Air song while “Overgrown’ marries naff drum FX to harem horns and the really rather awful “Rosie’ arses around with a maudlin sense of honky-tonk before ending in high-kicking Russian folkdance. If that all sounds odd then yeah, it is, but “odd’ thanks to a contrived sense of eclecticism that detracts from what it otherwise is at heart: reasonably solid, reasonably straightahead indie rock.