Pomegranates "Everybody, Come Outside!" Lujo Records Sounds like: The orchestral score to a lucid dream Grade: B+
Pomegranates strike the listener with their pop sensibilities as much as their psychedelic song arrangement, which provides us with an album experimental enough to flirt with the avant-garde while being accessible enough to find the record spinning on a dance floor in Brooklyn. Their unique sounds have earned them opening gigs for the likes of The French Kicks and Peter Bjorn & John, but their song craft puts them on another tier.
Vocalists Joey Cook's and Isaac Karns' voices often strain to find the correct mixture of playfulness and sincerity as they sing songs about classic tropes like scorned love and future-obsessed angst with a fresh looping structure that allows the listener to fall into the songs and envelop them. The twinkling guitars and primitive beats of "Jerusalem Had a Bad Day" create a rich landscape while the tropical droning chords of "384BC" recall a wistfulness and yearning for the past. The album contains a trifle of a story about time travel, which manifests itself in the varying tones of each song as if representing a different period in both world history and the history of the band.
"Everybody, Come Outside!" maintains its dreamy grandeur throughout, from the pop guitars of its title track to the 13-minute long "I Feel Like I'm a Million Years Old," which features a shoegaze sensibility with a frugal economy of sound, getting the most of its shimmering sound. The band borrows a lot from acts like Animal Collective, but doesn't conjure up the sense of immediacy of some of their predecessors' songs. Instead, much of the sound hangs in the back of the listener's head, not actively seeking attention but willing to accept its place as background noise. This makes its moments of headstrong pop rock that much more enjoyable though, as the album unravels a sort of depth that is more than welcome from an original act.
-MICHAEL RICHARDSON
Tiny Animals "Sweet Sweetness" North Street Records Sounds like: Rivers Cuomo's unusable material Grade: C
Tiny Animals have the quintessential New York pop story: After forming as a power trio, they played some dive bars and local concerts until they were discovered, signed and produced. But with their debut album, it becomes clear they could have used more time out of the spotlight.
"Sweet Sweetness" opens with "Youth Today," an upbeat number with punchy guitar riffs ripped from Interpol at their peak but quickly descends into a steady monotone that sound more like "Maladroit"-era Weezer. The effect is a lovely juxtaposition between the new indie aesthetic and old alt-rock audacity, which is recreated in other songs on the album. The problem is vocalist Chris Howerton, who can't hope to match Rivers Cuomo's expressiveness and must settle for middling emo-moaning. He works with what he has, and with a bit of creative vocal mixing he creates some interesting twists on his genre, but it holds back the album in a way that is hard to ignore.
Songs like "Goodbye July" and "Freedom of Choice" continue this trend of upbeat pseudo-emo with pulsing synthesizers and the addition of a frenetic drumming that pushes the songs towards their logical ends, never really stopping to create interesting hooks for the individual tracks. The result is an album that feels too rushed. And when they try to slow down the progression, as with the track "I'd Give It All Away," the music must rest on its weakest aspects, making it sound more like an '80s power ballad rather than the un-ironic earnestness the band is clearly striving for. The lyrics do not help in this tragic endeavor, which all feel written in a rush the day before recording.
The album is good in places and deficient in others, but it always wears its influences on its sleeve - leaving the listener anxious to go listen to the music this album sprang from rather than give the album itself a second run-through. It's a failure of idol-worship and shows the band's inability to add a new twist, making the album feel rote and uninspired.
-M.R.
Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers "Songs in the Night" Ramseur Records Sounds like: Joanna Newsom got soul Grade:B+
The debut full-length album of Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers has soul. 22-year-old Crain, the band's main vocalist, hails from Oklahoma, and her folk sensibility shapes the album. Lilting, layered harmonies make poetry of the songs' simple but heartfelt lyrics. Both beautiful and personal, this is authentic folk at its best. Crain's deep and rich vocals tell a compelling story in each song: Her narrative weaves together the familiar yarns of love won and lost, but also the challenges and joys of being a young artist. "The ground the brown dirt, thick and wet / My feet don't have their holding yet / What will I do?" she sings in the track "Scissor Tales," evoking a beautiful and tangible image of youth's insecurity.
But Crain's voice is the true gem of the album. Whereas her freak-folk contemporary Joanna Newsom soars and whirls through the higher octaves, Crain's vocals are rich and deep. Her vocals bring unexpected elements of soul to the album's mix, allowing Crain to take the folksy framework of the music and make it entirely her own. Delivered in Crain's soulful voice, the clear images of the lyrics achieve an emotional maturity and resonance. She imbues the entire album with an inexplicable complexity: Hers is the voice of a young storyteller, finding wisdom in her music making.
-ALI GOLDSTEIN
