Hmmm, this Canadian act has some real potential, but something's just not clicking with me. Musically it's fairly dry and quirky indie rock with a good mix of dark melody, discordance, and faint noisiness. They've also got a really cool recording that lets warm, natural tones interact with one another in a tightly knit and balanced mix. The rhythm section sounds fucking perfect and I love that the bass tone is really even with the guitars, and the guitars are intriguingly distorted with a lot of fuzzy texture. There's a lot of space in the mix that lets each instrument breath, yet everything still feels unified, which is great. As for what I don't like? It's hard to pin down. "All I See" is a very well written song with an excellent chorus, but I hate the keyboards - which, being hard panned in the right speaker against guitars in the left, make things too annoying and hipster sounding, thus damaging an otherwise awesome track. They don't use keyboards often, but... "Her Name is Montreal" brings back the synths and again they suck, so they definitely need to toss that shit immediately. There's a lot of cool music here that has nothing to do with new wave hipster bullshit, so why fuck up solid compositions by bringing that crap into the picture? I guess some of the other songs aren't as strong (the almost ska sounding main chord progression in "Great St. Clair" is annoying), but none of it's bad. The vocals do need a little something more. It's kind of this raspy almost singing style that sounds like it's going for a Jawbreaker thing, but it's not totally working. It feels a little too plain and one-sided, almost like gruffly talking in key or something. There's not as much energy or feeling to the vocals as there is to the music. Not consistently anyway. There are some mild effects laid over the vocals at times, and that works, and when they're doubled or lean more towards actual singing they're pretty effective. I don't know. "Art Beaudrie" is another darker track that I like, it's a little catchier and has a good energy to it (and shockingly enough the brief synth textures are fine in this piece), sort of like opener "No Fire" but more streamlined. I don't care for the layout just because the cover art is kind of stupid. All of the other imagery looks nice, and the design is clean, but that cover... what gives? It's just weak. No lyrics or anything are included, just clouded band photos across the center spread and minimal text credits and such. Truth be told this is one of those somewhat rare cases where this is an irritating and frustrating CD simply because this band could be fucking awesome with very little work, and it's just not happening yet. Seriously. Chuck the god damn keyboards and place a little more feeling into the vocals and you'd be primed for action. Most of the music on this thing is solid and there are a few songs that demonstrate damn fine writing abilities, so... I'll be wanting to hear more from these guys in the future, I'd hate to miss out if they finally nail it.
[Inner-Flight]
Running time - 17:17, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: No Fire, All I See]
Inner-Flight Records - http://www.innerflightrecords.com
