Cassette Review: public spreads the news "treat your self" (Illuminated Paths)

[$6 // http://illuminatedpaths.bandcamp.com/album/treat-your-self]

As far as I've decided to no longer think of Illuminated Paths as being "that vaporwave label", because a lot of what I hear over there is vaporwave and if I'm not sure and think it's vaporwave then I just kind of assume it is because it's on Illuminated Paths, but the fact is that not everything on Illuminated Paths is vaporwave and some of these new cassettes by them (Well, new to me) are perfect examples of that.

It's hard to describe public spreads the news but they have a distinct sound which involves a lot of guitar note looping.     The most time I ever spent listening to the radio was always in a car and when we lived in Texas we had a van that was so old it couldn't even have a tape deck in it, so we listened to the radio.    Since returning to Connecticut I haven't really listened to the radio until more recently, such as within the past few weeks of my writing this review.    If you listen to what is the "modern rock" or "alternative rock" type of station then you will know that everything either sounds like Mumford & Sons/Of Monsters and Men or it sounds like fun. (the band, not like "Oh hey, this is fun!")

So while I feel like these guitar loops have been extracted from some band on the radio, I say this with my connection to the radio going back a few years to when The Killers and Kings of Leon were running things over, you know, whatever it is that is going on now exactly.     I don't think that public spreads the news particularly lifted any of those guitar riffs, but rather just created their own hooks in a similar manner that end up sounding like perhaps the best parts of those songs.

Worth noting though is that there are other elements to this cassette, which I wouldn't classify as vaporwave but really wouldn't know what to put in for a genre anyway (Is guitar looping a genre now?) and some of them include bringing the funk which more often than not makes me believe we are about to get into an episode of "Shaft" (Shutyourmouth...), but it is just overall good and something unlike what I've heard before and am used to hearing on the whole.