 Fort
Nightly
Imagine some sort of weird Walkmen
and Madness mash-up
and you have The White Rabbits. Throw in some spooky Specials
or Clinic reverb and
maybe the pop sensibilities of a Hot
Hot Heat, and you've drilled down even a bit more. Granted,
their sound is more fleshed out than any of those, as six dudes
in a band these days is like twice as many as is popular (unless
you're one of those wacky "music collectives"). The songs are
slinky and bottom-heavy, with just a hint of middle-eastern
smokiness and Caribbean bounce, and with many of the melodies
provided by the voices and lots of piano flourishes. It's really
hard to pinpoint what is so attractive about this music, other
than to say it just flows naturally. The stuff feels kind of
organic and slippery and something that will grow into classic
territory on their next LP. |
 It's Frightening
|
 Milk Famous
This is a band I always want to like more than I do. It's not that I dislike anything they do, including this, their new album, but their highs are never very high and their lows are just kind of there. Kind of how I always felt about the Walkmen precursor, Jonathan Fire*Eater. The concept is better than the execution. And in this case, the concept is a band living on the more experimental (read: less melodic) side of the Spoon catalog. They have a pretty cool sound going on, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere, and too often relies on production rather than song writing. So the whole album sounds like a bag of tricks rather than a complete rock n roll experience. A "vibe" is just a hard thing on which to ply your trade these days, with so much music out there -- especially in non genre-based music. This shit ain't drum n bass, or whatever dance electronica shite is popular with the kids (and Euro-types) these days, so hooks and variance is somewhat important. So while I certainly don't hate this album, and even like the idea and some of the overall concepts here, nothing jumps out at me to make me recommend it as anything but second tier. |
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