Friday, April 20, 2012

SBSR: Whales “Rain Dance”

Recently, I’ve been downloading and listening to music like crazy from Band Camp.   This is a review of a group of songs by the same band I got from Band Camp- usually it constitutes an EP.   This is a song-by-song review and it is never to exceed six songs.   At the end, I will tell you the “Recommended Downloading Level”, which means whether or not I think you should spend your time downloading these songs.   It’s on a scale from 1 to 5, 5 meaning that you should stop reading my review and download these songs immediately and 1 meaning that if you even think about downloading these songs your computer will be infected with a horrific bad music virus.   Enjoy.
Whales “Rain Dance”
01: “Storm Clouds” [2:32] --  We start with someone asking if it’s raining outside, then we run this same guitar part on a loop, while it is sometimes accented by a bass line.   Pretty mellow instrumental indie rock that kind of sounds like mewithoutYou when the song ends.
02:  “Grew Poos (Grow Up)” [3:46] --  Oh, vocals.  Good thing I don’t listen to the first song only.   It keeps that nice indie pop rock feel, but the vocals are seemingly scarce throughout this song.  It’s hard to describe how the singer sounds when he does have his occasional moment.    This song seems a little bit all over the place, yet still pretty well structured. 
03: “Finally, Rain” [3:35] -- This is sort of a more traditional song that sounds a bit like Kings of Leon maybe.   There’s some fancy guitar work and once again minimal singing.   We even have a nice buildup at one point when everyone says the same thing at the same time.  I know this reference is pretty far out there, but this reminds me of the band A Trunk Full of Dead Bodies.
04: “Juggalettes” [3:48] -- What is a juggalette?  Is it an ICP thing?  That’s all I can think of for some reason.   This song opens with a melody and vocals.   It has a kind of jazzy riff to it.   The vocalist really gets into it, kind of shouting how he’s not sorry.  I cannot quite place why he sounds somewhat familiar, but maybe he just sounds like something I’ve never heard before.
05:  “Fox & Hound” [6:13] -- This must be their ballad because it’s starting off slow.  Now it’s doing that dueling clean and distorted guitars thing.   Man, this song is long.   It has different parts, but it just keeps going.    And now he’s screaming.    Has anyone besides me ever heard of The Commercials?  I didn’t think so.  It’s not important. 
06:  “Clear Skies” [3:12] -- We open kind of quiet with guitar notes and singing mixed in.  I’m waiting for it to drop into a rocking song.    Two minutes in and I’m still waiting.  Maybe this is the ballad.  I guess it ends nice and quietly because it makes me want to go to sleep at the end, which is a fitting way to close a group of songs such as this would be an EP.
At around twenty three minutes in length, I would definitely download these songs if you’re a fan of that indie rock pop kind of stuff.
Recommended Downloading Level:  3/5

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