 I am listening to Boris Smile’s forthcoming EP ‘Beartooth’ for the second time as I start writing this review. By the end of the next paragraph I will have turned it off. From California, Boris Smile are attempting to break into a musical market here in the UK that is already saturated with bands that play this style, these songs, with those lyrics. Actually, that’s not that fair. A lot of the other bands have lyrics far more thought about than singing about a girl who “…fell down that hole, if he (the bear) gets you he’ll eat your face and then he’ll eat your soul” as you will hear in the track that the EP is named after; Beartooth is possibly the weakest song on this EP, ironic in that Boris Smile obviously feel proud enough of the song to rate it higher than ‘tut tut’; one of the tracks that didn’t grate on me. It vaguely reminds me of the ‘hit’ single ‘no cars go’, the very song that ruined my enjoyment of listening the talented band, Arcade Fire. However this is not the song to base my review of the overall talent of the band. Wesley Chung’s voice is distinctly familiar to that of Greg Barkley from the Austin, Texas band ‘OH NO OH MY’, a very talented indie, pop band that have been playing this style for a good few years now, and they do it very well. Intriguingly though, something in Wesley’s vocal and guitar style is strikingly similar to that voice and chord sequences of Jason Lytle, singer/songwriter of Grandaddy, a very famous group also from CALIFORNIA, people. Despite this rather suspect familiarity, there are two songs on Beartooth EP that both show potential. I have already mentioned ‘tut tut’, the other is ‘Program me to Love’. Both of these songs are by no means groundbreaking, being everything that the previously referenced bands have already done, and better, and a long time ago. However, the production of these two songs makes them a tolerable listen; the mixture of string arrangements and the electronic soundscape sitting comfortably in the mix of ‘Program me to Love’ shows some effort. And that is worth a mention. The song called ‘Hour of the wolf’ actually reminds me to the sort of chord sequences and slightly haunting melodies produced distinctively by the Texas band Midlake. And the lyrics are simple. Which is great, because the lack of poetic experimentation has eliminated, for once, the amateurish lyrics found in the rest of Beartooth. One thing worth noting of Boris Smile is that they state their influence by the ‘Broken Social Scene’, a collective from Toronto, Canada. This can only be a good thing, and this isn’t reflected in the music so strongly, but rather in the bands open minded structure. Borissmile actually consists of 8 members, with 15 ‘friends’ that have all contributed to the recordings. Although Wesley is definitely the distinctive frontman, even the production engineer has his own video on the myspace site, showing that Boris Smile appreciate every effort in helping them make their music. With this in mind, hopefully, 23 young individually talented people will collectively be able to recognise what they are lacking in terms of individuality, and will in time, if they survive, redeem themselves to a record with more personality.
Last edited by jack s : April 10, 2009 at 06:04 PM.
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| | | | Overall Rating | | 3 | | Vocals / Lyrics | | 2 | | Musicianship | | 4 | | Production | | 7 | | Creativity | | 2 | | Lastability | | 2 | | Reviewers Tilt | | 0 |
29% | |
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