Labels: self released
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Only a few seconds into this, and the singer is doing a Tim Kinsella impression, although he also sounds a bit like the dude from Modest Mouse. However, it’s a sunny Sunday morning, I am in a good mood, and this is not in the least bit twiddly. Opener, “Wait, I’ll Get Back To You” has a sad-sack vibe, the guitars have a lovely melancholy flavour that I really enjoy, building up and spiralling around, even only half way through the song. It soars to the end, reminding me again of early Modest Mouse or Carissa’s Weird. The music sounds substantially more influenced by indie rock than other bands that have come out of the post Algernon Cadwallader boom, and I only put them in that bracket as the band tag themselves as “emo” and “twinkly” on their Bandcamp page. I also like that they don’t have ironic song titles but are full on earnest and write songs with names like “Winter Kept Us Warm”. Basically, I think that this means that Studying get emo, when way too many bands around at the moment don’t. They even get all over-emotional and sob-scream on the previously mentioned “Winter Kept Us Warm”, which comes in after a super intense quote from the movie “Hideous Men” adapted from a David Foster Wallace book (not that I knew this, I had to look it up), and finale “Up the Corporate Ladder”.
This is a good take on the indiemo sound, although I would personally have despatched the slightly post-rocky guitar effects and played it straight up. That’s just me though, as they do help establish the mood that the band is going for and therefore crucial to their sound. Worth a look if indiemo is your bag.