Labels: Brontosaurus Records
Review by: MH
Let’s start with the name – Schocholautte. My first reaction was that this is an appalling name for a band. I went to their homepage and they have actually acknowledged this and even their Facebook domain is called “worstbandnameever”. So they clearly don’t take themselves too seriously. That doesn’t change the fact that the name is terrible and I don’t get why a band would choose such a bad name when there are an infinite number of options to call yourselves and there is always time to change the name. Maybe they like to be wacky though. Apparently they wear brown when they play live and the band name should be pronounced “Shock-a-lot”.
Anyway, I’ll try not get bogged down in all that stuff “” it’s time to move on. This band comes from Brooklyn and are doing some kind of indie pop with a bit of surf/garage rock n roll thrown in. It has a summery feel to it although it was released in November. It’s pretty messy and distorted throughout and they move from poppier elements to noisier distortion at the end of some songs that causes me to skip the next track. I’m not massively into this. “Orange County” has the kind of repetitive chorus that will get into my head and stop me from sleeping. It’s all a bit too much like the Strokes vocally for me and not really my cup of tea. Even at my most focused, I’ve not been able to listen to more than 3 tracks in a row at a time without being distracted and that’s not a great sign. Generally I struggle to get through a whole track before wanting to skip to the end. I’m not saying it’s terrible though “” I kind of like “A Failure And Some Drinks” “” a slower, sad song that breaks the mould of the rest of the album. Having said that though I’m starting to think that I like the title of the track more than the actual song. Closing track “Everyday” is quite a nice and simple pop song. However, on the whole I’m not getting into it and for that reason I am having to dish out the admittedly harsh punishment of banning this band from my lastfm library on the off-chance that it plays any of the other 12 tracks on this album.