The Heresy Of The Bazan Branch Curse
While I’ve discussed some of the things I’m anticipating right now, I thought I’d bring you up to date with a couple of my reviews of their last records. Here’s hoping that they can improve on their past records and make this a year to hang their hats upon.
Maritime: Heresy And The Hotel Choir– Maritime returns with their 3rd catchy indie pop record. If you recall, I loved We, The Vehicles while their debut, Glass Floor, absolutely sucked. Theres plenty to love on this record, though: Catchy hooks, singable vocals, upbeat songs… the usual trademarks of Von Bohlen’s previous works. Though theres a couple of bumps here and there, this is actually one of my favorite records that hes been associated with. Solely based on individual song ratings, this isn’t a perfect record. But then again, its a really fun and entertaining record and isn’t that what rock is all about? I think it is… 8.6/10
David Bazan: Curse Your Branches– Pedro The Lion was always good to David Bazan. While his technique and style have evolved over the years, every bit of emotion that you were able to hear in every breath of his Whole EP to his ‘solo’ record, Fewer Moving Parts, was a constant. As always, this remains the best part of this record for a lot of reasons. The thing that separates this from every other release in the past is mostly the excessive repetition of lyrics that come up now and again. If I ever had a problem with a repetitive lyric in the past, that was brushed aside once I heard this because it got out of hand pretty early on. Now I realize that this is a somewhat petty complaint especially because the music itself lacked a little compared with his previous works, but when an entire song is as lyrically repetitive as these are, it stands out. Setting this aside, musically it wasn’t as nearly ambitious as Fewer Moving Parts or even any of his works. Sure, it sounded a bit more complex at times, but overall it was a bit jumbly partially due to the excessive reverb on most of the vocals and also in part to the intentionally sloppy instrumentation. I can appreciate one without the other, but together it annoys me. There were a number of gems in here, but as a complete work it didn’t nearly live up to the expectations I always have for his music…5.6/10