Review; Deliver This Creature

Mr. Gnome
"Deliver This Creature"
(El Marko)
Sounds like: Primarily a catchy blend of contemporary alternative and indie

Mr. Gnome just gets it. The Cleveland-based duo, which is comprised of Nicole Barille and Sam Meister, understands the beauty of experimenting with various genres and creating seamless music.

Crunching guitars juxtaposed with breathy vocals are the bread and butter of these tracks. Barille's voice can often be likened to Fiona Apple, possessing the same piercing twang. The lyrics and music interchangeably serve as the backdrop for each other. This kind of playful and sometimes angry relationship between singer and song parallel Death from Above 1979's album "You're a Woman, I'm a Machine."

Upon listening to "Deliver This Creature," it is glaringly obvious that Mr. Gnome knows a thing or two about putting on a roaring good live show. Their live performance would encompass a kind of raw energy, making even the shyest of concertgoers into a veritable dance machine.

The upfront, drum-oriented sound forces listeners to tap their feet, bob their heads or move some kind of appendage to the beat. Like Death from Above, however, the songs on this album sometimes meld into one winding song hitting the same crescendos and emphasizing the same lows, making it indistinguishable. This can be a glaring annoyance at times.

That kind of repetition is disappointing, but not surprising, considering Mr. Gnome's lust for variety can only go so far when using the same rotation of sounds. To alleviate a bit of the monotony from the primarily alternative- and indie-based tracks, "Silhouette" and "Tied" each soothe the listener, transporting them into a reality equivalent of the ice skating scene in "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind."

In the end, Mr. Gnome prove that they can produce fairly mindless, yet complex indie fun, and that even a band with a weird name can sometimes live up to the hype.

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