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Allday Afternoon: Everything After North Street EP Imagine a bunch of guys from
your college dorm just chilling out in the hallway with their acoustic guitars,
playing casually until something emerges sounding just about right, and youre
half way to understanding the sound of Chapel Hills Allday Afternoon.
The casualness of the music-making process is depicted perfectly in the
bands roughly produced, yet beautiful Everything After North Street
EP. The five-song EP is
characterized by priceless melodies that the band has self-described as
jangle-pop, yet this description seems somewhat inaccurate to me.
This could be a semantics thing, but I always considered jangle-pop to be
characterized by chiming, ringing electric guitars.
The songs on this EP are characterized by the subtler electric guitar of
Joel Turner that lets the acoustic guitar(s) take the forefront and dominate
nearly every song. Among others, Allday Afternoon
names The Connells, Toad The Wet Sprocket, and Guster as influences.
The influence of these artists can be heard in the catchy, melodic
demeanor of the bands songs, yet there are more lessons to be learned from
their influences strengths and shortcomings.
I have seen Guster perform once, and frankly, I was not impressed.
I found that the three-piece acoustic band was trying to make up for
their simpler sound by playing harder and louder.
I was nearly deaf by the time I left the show, and it was as a result of
just two acoustic guitars and some bongo drums!
Allday Afternoon is only on the brink of the same pitfall; the three
acoustic guitars of the opening track I Couldnt Find almost but dont
quite drown out singer Alex Rhodes vocals.
I Couldnt Find nevertheless remains a highlight on the disc,
showing off the bands vocal harmonies and complementary, interweaving
acoustic guitar parts. Here is the lesson to be learned from bands like The Connells
and Toad The Wet Sprocket: singing in falsetto is ok! In fact, it adds so much to the sound of some songs just
look to The Connells One Simple Word for an example of how pushing
vocals up an octave, to the breaking point, can add to certain songs.
At first I thought that maybe Rhodes wasnt able to sing above a
certain range, but then at the closing of the EPs final song Boomerang,
he belts out his highest notes on the disc singing, Dont burn out in the
fading rain, and it sounds just great.
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