Cassette Review: SEWING "Use This As A Reminder"

[$5 // https://iamsewing.bandcamp.com/album/use-this-as-a-reminder]

The first song on SEWING's "Use This As A Reminder" is acoustic and instrumental, but the second comes through with vocals which seemingly changes things quite a bit.    It is folk to some extent, as some of these songs could be found on the "Juno" soundtrack, but there are also obvious hints of EFS and even a banjo.

Though there are also elements of Violent Femmes, Common Folk and it grows more intense with the drums at one point, the overall effect of this cassette still brings out that home-recorded feel and as if it is still just one person singing into a tape recorder no matter how many instruments are playing.

With elements of Soul Asylum as well, the one thing that kind of jumped out at me with this SEWING cassette is that it has that quality to it of the Get Up Kids song "Campfire Kansas", which I tend to think about a lot and actually find rather interesting that a single song seems to have created an entire genre of music.

So why did SEWING give this cassette this title?   Is it because we are to use this as a reminder that not everyone who falls into this similar genre sounds exactly like EFS or Daniel Johnston?    Is it that good music still exists out there and sometimes it is just a matter of finding it more than having it seemingly force fed to you?

Whatever you want to take out of the title of this cassette- and it does leave a lot of options as to what this can be a reminder of, even just something as simple of the forgotten art of the cassette- the music on here is good.   The songs are diverse enough, complete with an electric guitar start and stop flurry to end, that it offers something more than what you might be used to from that home made genre.

It is amazing to me that I can find so many of these cassettes and not just think of them as being clones of one another, but it isn't any testament to me as much as it is to the artists, including SEWING here, who make them and lend their own voice so as to not fit into a genre but rather craft their own.