CD Review: The High Violets "Heroes And Halos" (Saint Marie Records)

[$11.99 // http://www.saintmarierecords.com/products/567261-the-high-violets-heroes-and-halos]

I would be the first to admit that in a lot of ways all it takes to win me over on new music is a female voice that sounds soothing to the ears.   While I realize a lot of people have to ask themselves why someone who couldn't sing would opt to join a band or do something as a solo project, I don't have a good answer for that but I know that as soon as I press play on this CD I am captivated each and every time as if it was the first time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will most often to a CD here and there, once per day at most, but with "Heroes And Halos" I can tell you that I put it in one day when we went out to do something for the day and it stayed in the CD player in the car the entire time.  It repeated probably three times in full but I never did want to take it out and I think that's one of those qualities about the music of it-- it's just not something you struggle to listen to or to review, but rather something you find it hard to stop listening to it.

The music is somewhere between pop, shoegaze and a lullaby but it can also be placed somewhere between bands like Garbage, Patti Smith and that one song by Sixpence None the Richer called "There She Goes".   It also has this strong musical quality of feeling like The Cure crossed with Duran Duran, but I'm not sure if that's something I even understand after writing it down.

From the drum beats to harmonies, I had a notion after the first time that I listened to this that she was saying "dumb" a lot in the second song and it is actually called "Dum Dum", so there you go.  It's fun to sing along to all of these songs though.   The lyrics are at this point where they have meaning but can also get stuck in your head.

My biggest conflict with this album was deciding whether The High Violets would best be fit for the soundtrack to a movie such as "10 Things I Hate About You" or "Empire Records", but if you remember the song "Free" by The Martinis was featured in "Empire Records" I think more of that song sounding like The High Violets than perhaps any other from either movie so that soundtrack should win out.

Though I realize people use the word "bliss" in a manner of describing the sound of a particular set of musical standards, I like to think of this album of The High Violets as being bliss.   It just makes me happy because it has that uplifting quality about it.  I can't be mad when I'm listening to this.   It's like some kind of wonderful drug, but, you know, don't do drugs... listen to this instead.