 | Overall Rating: 7.8 Lyrics: 7.7 Melodies: 8.1 Arrangements: 8.3 Thematicity: 7.9 Originality: 7.6 Production: 8.1 |
Voxtrot managed to impress more than a few people since their debut EP Raised By Wolves came out last year, for their second, Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives, has precipitated a fair amount of critical buzz, and for good reason: unlike many bands who have garnered similar acclaim without actually realeasing a full-length album (e.g. the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), they don't rely exclusively on style or flair, and display a genine talent for writing catchy songs and arranging them well. The comparisons to Belle and Sebastian you've probably heard made are apt, though it should be emphasized that when people make such comparisons, they are speaking of the band's modern incarnation, which bases its material around the instrumental hooks and pop melodies exemplified on The Life Pursuit. Comparisons could also be made to Kill the Moonlight-era Spoon (Voxtrot is, after all, from Austin, Texas) and perhaps to Hefner (though that's a bit of a stretch), but they should also be made to brit-pop acts like Maximo Park, The Futureheads, for their lyrics take more cues from their masculine angst (albeit in a toned-down manner) than in Stuart Murdoch's literary reveries and schoolyard vignettes. Neither musically nor lyrically are they incredibly innovative, at least for now, but that doesn't appear to be the point: Voxtrot are out to convince you that they are, in their own words, "married to [their] work," and their dilligence, aimed both at the listener and the characters or characters to whom their songs appear to be addressed, isn't ever in doubt.
The five songs on Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives are all decent tunes, and every one gets a great deal of mileage out of the taut arrangements of piano, guitar, bass (which is quite well used, despite the simplicity of the parts), vocals, drums, and strings. "Rise Up in the Dirt," which offers what probably is the EP's best vocal melody in its chorus, evokes a sense of triumph with its post-chorus swells and retains the listener's attention throughout the verses due to its strong piano melodies. "Four Long Days" manages to get a pedal stell into the mix without it seeming like a tasteless device to countify things for variety's sake, and "Fast Asleep" is a great pop song, pure and simple. There are a few issues Voxtrot will need to iron out before they get around to recording a full-length, however, and while I'd hesitate to dub them problems, I would say that they keep this EP (like their last) from being truly great. What makes Belle and Sebastian, whom the band emulates musically more than anybody else, great isn't melodies but lyrics: Stuart Murdoch has a knack for inventing believable, thoughtful protagonists, who are often female, which makes Ramesh Srivastava's first-person monologues, which aim to be masculine yet to some degree sensitive, seem a trifle one-dimensional. To be fair, they're not, but they also lack the intensity of Maximo Park's, the philosophical quality of Shins frontman James Mercer's, and the irony of Hefner's. In short, they're somewhat humdrum, and furthermore, the same can be said of some of the vocal melodies, which make for good pop songs, but (save perhaps "Rise Up in the Dirt") aren't exceptionally memorable. The message here is that if you like Belle and Sebastian (especially their more recent material) and other arrangement-heavy pop acts, you'll like Voxtrot, though they don't do much to distinguish themselves from the herd, save arranging their compositions well and offering a consistently above-average tracklist -- but I suppose those are rare and often overlooked qualities in their own right.
-BT
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