Indie clichés enlivened with nervous energy
Jack Evans | Staff Writer
Last Updated:11/17/09 Section: Movie Reviews
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The album's standouts, like the six minute opener "…And the Hazy Sea" and "Indiana," work so well because they breathe new life into tired indie rock clichés-the loud-quiet-loud dynamics, the oblique lyrics, the In the Aeroplane Over the Sea horn fanfare, and Funeral-esque "woahs" that punctuate the chorus-projecting them through this nostalgic filter. On these two tracks, Cymbals Eat Guitars doesn't sound like the actual Built to Spill or Pavement as much as they sound like our own hazy, idealized rememberings of when we heard those bands for the first time.
Elsewhere the band doesn't wear its influences so well. Nowadays it seems like every indie rock band on earth is contractually obligated to record a My Bloody Valentine pastiche, and here it's called "Share." The track goes nowhere and spends seven minutes doing it. Cymbals Eat Guitars' attempts at shorter, more immediate tracks are similarly mixed. "Some Trees (Merrit Moon)" gets by on terse, nervous energy, ready to combust at any second. "Living North," on the other had, feels rote and faceless-the definition of a filler track.
The people who write off Cymbals Eat Guitars for being too derivative of a style that is already out of date anyway are probably a little right but still unfair. Part of me really wants to like this band, because even if their name sounds like the kind of non sequitur Stephen Malkmus might scream over and over on one of the lesser songs on Slanted Enchanted, it was actually taken from a Lou Reed quote.
So Cymbals Eat Guitars can see past the mid-nineties after all.
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