The Back Room

Today's Music of the Day is Editors' The Back Room. This album came to me in a satanic ritual that was equal parts witchcraft and powdered sugar. It was sacre-licious. I'm honestly not privy to any real information about the band, and fearing that a trip to Wikipedia would only bias my review in one way or another, let's do this one live!

Back Room has a very early 1980's rock vibe to it, and in this case, it happens to be a good thing. The song structure here isn't overly complicated, and probably owes a debt to "New Year's Day"-era U2, both in terms of sound (guitar in particular) and blue-collar sensibility. Having missed out on so many of the circa-2000 overhyped British bands (Interpol, Libertines, etc.), I'm not sure how Back Room compares to them, but the results here are generally positive if relatively unambitious.

Still, this album has two primary driving forces - those being the drums and the electric guitar - and it does a fair job of pairing them up at the proper moments. (The singer contributes plenty, but his voice doesn't shriek or wail enough to really dominate the album consistently.)

This is a fair album, not exactly groundbreaking, but the tension is there, and it has enough drive. It's not a hard listen - sometimes, one longs for more sophisticated lyrics - but the gruff charm carries it through a dozen songs that seem more brief than they actually are.

In Other News:
Support Your Local Catgun is still alive. Just lazy, and out of new music.

Starving!