Rapid Fire Reviews: Rock But Make It Quirky

It's technically not even March yet and I already have like 50 albums from this year that I want to review but haven't had the time for one reason or another. Hopefully I can really dig in on these rapid fire reviews and covering new albums as they come out and we're starting here with a few experimental rock records I've been listening to and hearing people talk about online. 

The Overload - Yard Act

Yard Act is a band I first heard about last year when some of the numerous singles they dropped in the lead up to this debut album started spreading in post-punk circles. Because of how much of a renaissance the genre has been going through particularly in Britain right now, I've sort of kept my ear to the ground with the style. What separates Yard Act is apparently pretty quickly with their lead singers distinctive snarl and their off kilter style of songwriting and performing which serves as set-up for those overtly political messages. The most enjoyable part of the record is probably unraveling the thematic content that each of these songs dive into. Even when it's occasionally mired in so many levels of irony that it's basically self-defeating, unraveling the points the band make on the record is a consistently enjoyable facet of their style. The half spoken word style vocals are what allows for the band to be so communicative in their songs but I wouldn't call the style very consistently executed. Some of the songs here suffer from a disparity between the uncompromising monotone of the vocals and the righteous energy of the instrumentation. While there is a wild bassline here and an infectious guitar riff there I would generally say I'm underwhelmed by a lot of the instrumentation. Despite their unique style I'm just not as enamored with the actual performances and sound as much as I expected to be. Overall this is a good start for the band that shows a lot of potential but it has some flaws that I think may be a problem for their work to translate to me going forward if they don't manage to develop their style in a significant way. 6.5/10

See Through You - A Place To Bury Strangers

I've had a weird relationship with this band ever since somebody I went to middle school with let me borrow a well worn CD copy of their 2009 sophomore album Exploding Head. Since then while I've never been like a huge fan of the band or anything I can't help but check in on what they're doing now and again because their direction often surprises and occasionally really intrigues me. This record is at the very least intriguing. The first half is a lot of what I've come to expect from the band, pummeling noise rock with distortion infecting absolutely everything in the mix and incessant soundplay. For the most part this works as well as ever and most of my favorite songs on the record come from this stretch. In the second half they make a bit of a strange decision to shift their sonic ambitions to something much more digestible. Not only do the sonic elements change but the actual compositions themselves with more bright hooks and repetition. I actually think these tracks are a decent bunch but most of the records duds are to be found here. Occasionally they just feel out of their wheelhouse without all the noise you'd expect to hear on one of their songs and the results sometimes manifest themselves in really awkward ways. If you like noise rock there are certainly a number of tracks here worth hearing but I'm not sure this is among the best in the genres contemporary scene, or even in the bands own discography. 6/10

Flicker - Andy Bell

Andy Bell is a songwriter and musician with a long musical track record whose contributions you may recognize from one of numerous different places. When I first think of his musical contributions it starts with founding one of the "big three" shoegaze bands in the late 80's, Ride. To many he is known as a member and songwriter for Oasis during the finale decade of their original run, as well as a member of the Liam Gallagher Oasis offshoot project Beady Eye. Regardless of what you know him for he followed the pair of Ride comeback albums with his own series of solo work. Flicker is a much longer project with seemingly grander ambitions but in my opinion it is significantly worse off for both of these. This album is kind of a mess both stylistically and compositionally. Firstly it is an absolutely mind numbing 78 minutes long and that manifests itself in two terrible ways. Firstly there are so many songs on the record that go on for way too long to an absolutely exhausting point. Secondly there are just too many songs on the album period. The first Beatles pastiche is bad enough but after the third or even fourth time I'm craving anything that sounds like it could have even been a Ride or Oasis b-side. This feels less like a singularly conceptualized solo project for Andy and more just a dump of absolutely everything he had lying around with absolutely no filter whatsoever. Is there some good stuff in here, sure. But to get to it there's such a mountain of lazy and aimless songwriting that I wouldn't recommend anyone go hunting. 4/10