Hailing from Durham, alternative rockers Edenthorn mix up a range of styles on their debut EP, ‘What’s On Your Mind?’. While never shy in flaunting a few of the nineties grungy sounds that clearly made them want to become musicians in the first place, some of the material on this release also comes with a surprising amount of melody and occasional funkiness – like Pearl Jam had decided to channel the radio-friendliness of Three Doors Down and Dishwalla.
Tag Archives: alternative
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS – Monuments To An Elegy
Following The Smashing Pumpkins relaunch in 2006 after a half-decade hiatus, the band’s ever-prolific mainman Billy Corgan went into overdrive. The ‘Zeitgeist’ album of the same year was well received, but subsequent projects were both broader in appeal and stylistic content. With the launch of the ‘Teargarden By Kaleidyscope’ song cycle in 2009, Corgan embarked on his most ambitious project since ‘Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness’ in 1995. ‘Teargarden’ – an ongoing series of releases covering a concept of sorts – began with two deluxe EPs of unreleased material, but really came alive with its third chapter, 2012’s full-length ‘Oceania’, which at the time of release stood as the reformed Pumpkins masterpiece…
SWING HERO – You’ve Never Been So Alone EP
Having gone through multiple lineup changes, Los Angeles based alt-rockers Swing Hero found themselves pared down to a duo by the end 2014. The slim band arrangement has no impact on their sound, however – on the three songs that inform their ‘You’ve Never Been So Alone’ 10” EP (their third record, released at the tail end of the year) Marshall Gallager (guitar/bass/vox) and Ben Scarboro (drums) make a glorious racket. Their wall of sound is typically retro, pulling a huge amount of influence from both shoegaze and grunge (and outlying subgenres thereof), but always sounds somehow timeless in its execution.
Following a brief buzz of an amp, a drum signifies the arrival of a surprisingly complex slab of grungy alternative rock. ‘Interest’ shows most of Swing Hero’s talents in a powerful opening number. Starting quietly, the first verse reveals Scarboro to be a player with a great talent, his snares providing much of the interest, while a solemn lead vocal from Gallager bares more than a passing resemblance to Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch with its somewhat dour tone. Before too long, the temptation to crank the volume takes over and the main guitar riff really asserts its presence. Adopting a thick, overdriven tone all round, a midpaced, head-nodding, metallic clang just drives its way relentlessly into the ears. Swing Hero are in full flow of their nineties revivalism, but somewhere underneath, there are still strong tuneful qualities. This surprising attention to melody comes not just in Gallager’s well-rounded delivery – by now risen to present a more powerful rock sound – but also via some unexpected “woo woo” backing vocals lurking somewhere within. By this time, the general volume of the performance recalls Sonic Youth’s more tuneful output, even if the sounds are less discordant than Thurston and Kim’s preferences. Fans of post-grunge and shoegaze sounds will find an almost instant kinship in this number.
Despite making a feature of a bass drum, ‘Grown Up’ is much quieter at first, a clean toned guitar tinkling, as various shimmering sounds pitch against another crooned vocal, all very much representing the louder end of the dreampop ouvre. The band could easy have constructed a full number from the more introspective sounds, but revert to their comfort blanket of distorted guitars for the chorus and beyond. This is by no means a bad decision – they sound so at ease rocking out after all. While the vocals represent some of the best performance on this EP – a mix of obvious melody and reverbed harmonies – it’s the instrumental work that really stands out and marks Swing Hero as a band to watch. The use of multi-tracked guitars, effects pedals and relatively simple bass thuds evoke strong memories of the heaviest parts of The Smashing Pumpkins’ classic ‘Siamese Dream’ and the artier part of the nineties alternative rock scene. Across five and a half minutes, ‘Home Is Where You Make It’ makes an even broader feature of such crashing riffs and a wall of cymbals, churning a distorted riff in a style slightly slower than expected. It’s not a great step from ‘Grown Up’ but is a stronger effort overall, thanks to such an insistent hook line. It’s here the EPs title appears, the line repeated as a simplistic refrain intercut with a few old-fashioned “doo doo”s for good measure. It’s a hook that’s so insistent that once it takes hold, its almost entirely possible to forget the rest of the lyrics in an instant. Whether echoed and shoegazey vocals or grungy guitar riffs are your thing, this track should be earmarked for listening and a possible download purchase.
With a bang up production job, this sounds great with the volume cranked. It may be more reliant on crunching and droning atmospheres than obvious songs, but Swing Hero push all the right buttons…and with absolute ease. Quieter and more focused than A Place To Bury Strangers, more tuneful than Yuck and edgier than Yo La Tengo, the three tracks presented on this EP represent the best in guitar-driven, brilliantly loud indie rock. Recommended.
December 2014
ORCHARD HILL – Make It Out Alive
A self-released EP, Orchard Hill’s ‘Make It Out Alive’ comes with a surprisingly American sound for a quartet from Oxfordshire. With some tough pop-punk/emo chops and a first rate production job from Ben Humphries [Maximo Park] and John Mitchell [You Me At Six], this debut is incredibly professional. For the genre, you’d be hard pushed to find a better sounding release from bands with ten times the budget at their disposal.
MIDNIGHT PLAYLIST – Built To Break EP
London’s Midnight Playlist are a four piece alternative pop-rock/pop-punk band, who bring a strong sense of good times and youthful spirit on their debut EP ‘Built To Break’. There’s a real energy present from the very beginning of the opening track: a door slams, voices chatter, an amplifier buzzes…and with that, the quartet burst into life. That opener ‘A Year In Hell’ mixes pop-punk guitar chords and an alternative rock spirit, like a DIY collision between early Sum 41 and Don Broco; it’s a performance on which drummer Atish really excels. Twin guitars chug and thrash in classic punk-pop style – even making room for a couple of lead flourishes – while lead vocalist Aaron cries each line with confidence, all the while happy to let his natural accent through, despite the attempts of a few vocal filters to make his voice sound more generic to the musical style. You’ll have heard this sort of thing a thousand times before, but there’s an energy and tightness here – even obvious despite the limited recording budget – that makes this tune very enjoyable all round.