Home  Reviews Album pinback - blue screen life
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pinback - blue screen life |
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Written by Drew
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Friday, 18 November 2005 |
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I've had this album for awhile...listened to it a few times. It never really sunk in...until about two weeks ago. I must have been deaf before, because this album is amazing, indie-pop with a beat and layers of complexity. It's an album that I think would appeal to fans of anything from dredg, to Sonic Youth, to Death Cab for Cutie, to Bright Eyes.
I really know nothing of this band other than this album, so I'm not going to bore you with some Googled back-story. You can do that yourself if you're interested.
Blue Screen Life is a rich and well assembled mesh of layered rhythms and harmonies that form multi-textured melodies. With a few exceptions, the songs bounce and jive along at a lively pace. "Offline P.K." opens Blue Screen Life with a combination of punchy and floating vocals and guitar tones that range from jangly to full and rich to bright acoustic. It's the layered vocals at the end of the song that give the first true hint of the album's potential. The melancholy and cinematic "Boo" happens to be the track that really grabs me. All the textures and layers typical of the album are there, but at a slower pace my ears are more attuned to. The bright and poppy "Penelope" is popular favorite, though it relies a bit heavily on my arch nemesis, the fake hand-clap. Thankfully, Pinback win me back with ear-buzzing guitar goodness and perfectly complimenting vocals on "Talby". The remainder of the album is filled with potential favorites. Take your pick, XIY, Prog, and Seville all follow the same catalytic formula, before the Paul McCartney-esque "West" slows things down a bit to set up the slow burner lead-out track, "Tres".
The things that make this album great may also be a potential hurdle, however. The pieces that make up each song blend well together, and in turn, the songs themselves blend very well together. At first it was difficult for me to break the music down and separate the songs in my mind. I felt that it was a good album, but I had difficulty finding little pieces that I could grab onto. It was just too much all at once. Reading through a couple of the reviews at amazon.com, I see that I'm not the only person to have this experience. I'm glad that I took the time to discover this album for what it really is, something fresh sounding and interesting (even now, four years after the album's release) for the jaded indie-pop listener. |
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