Cassette Review: Eggs On Mars "In A Desert Place"

$5 //
https://eggsonmars.bandcamp.com/album/in-a-desert-place   //

It has been almost two years since we last heard from Eggs On Mars (Well, maybe more like a year and a half, but I'm rounding up for dramatic effect) and during that time a lot has changed in my life.  I ramble on about it in nearly every review I write.   But I often wonder what happens in the lives of those who make the music.   I always think about "Well, since I last heard from this band I had to move and that was stressful" but what about what the artists have gone through since then?  What I go through really feels less important because in a sense what the artists go through as humans is more heavily influenced in the music.

"In A Desert Place" begins with a trippy acoustic song and then it goes into this electric rock that's similar to The Mr T Experience and The Police.    It feels like the type of music you could have heard back in the day at CBGB (And yeah, watch that movie for the music) and that makes me think of Talking Heads, though there are also elements of something newer like Franz Ferdinand perhaps and also the first Foo Fighters album.   A killer guitar solo shows how Eggs On Mars has their own style of rock.   Side A comes to a close with a fast paced poppy song which reminds me of a specific song which I can't put my finger on.

Side B opens with a darker feel and then journeys back into that Buddy Holly/MTX sense that was touched upon during the first side.    One of the more important aspects I think you need to focus on with this cassette- because the music flat out rocks- is that it does carry a theme.    From the beginning and ending songs- "Land Once Loved"- to songs like "Did We Come Here To Die", the cassette makes you feel as if you are in a desert and yet it doesn't actually scream it out at you.   It's more of a state of mind when you listen to this enough times that you begin to feel it as well than it is a concept album in the sense of Green Day's "American Idiot" for example.

This also has a classic rock feel to it overall- not just in the sense that, yes, you can make the obvious connection to this cassette with the song about going through the desert on a horse with no name (Someone name that damn horse!) but just in the way that I imagine songs were crafted into albums in the 1960s.     If you listen to older music you'll hear those underlying themes- sometimes they are all songs about protest or love but they somehow all tie together in the end to form an album.  At some point along the way, artists forgot about that aspect of music making and now it feels like songs are placed in an order which (sometimes) makes sense for pacing but they have no real connection.   This cassette just feels like all the songs are connected which is why it should also be best experienced from start to finish every time.