BANDS:

Punk & Ska
80's New Wave/
Post-Punk/
College Bands
90's & Beyond
Virginia, North
Carolina, & DC

Sound Proof: The Chicago Bus
[self-released]

SOUND PROOF is a creation of Jason Hanley. . . . No one could ever accuse Hanley of being packaged. On the contrary, very little of any part of the musical experience is repeated. Stylistically, it is moody and apt to change directions, hurricane in manner on a dime. Stitched like a quilt of moods and sounds SOUND PROOF will NEVER bore the listener. Each song permeates through either the masterful guitar, often spastic harmonica, exacting keyboards, vocals that not only send messages of relevant world concepts and intermingled existentialism executed by a full bodied voice of emotion with a commitment to the song, promising to take the listener on an odyssey of human experiences.

The above is a rather poorly constructed paragraph, grammatically and otherwise. Apparently written by Hanley himself, it is the description of Sound Proofs music that one will find on the bands website and in the press kit they send out with review copies of their album. And it is fitting that this is the best Sound Proof can do in selling themselves to a potential audience. In fact, it serves as a perfect metaphor for their music.

Most of the reviewers who have ever written about Sound Proof praise the bands unpolished feel, the fact that they just play it straight, dispensing with most studio trickery. These same reviewers also claim that Sound Proof comes off like an acoustic Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane, or maybe just a Latin-tinged Country Joe MacDonald; at any rate, some sort of bluesy-folksy act from the late 1960s. Actually, this jazzy, jammy, and yes, sometimes Latin-inspired collective plays neither unplugged psychedelic rock nor peacenik folk. In respect to the 60s, their music recalls only the way-out new age-y side of that time period something far more Santa Cruz than San Francisco in spirit. Think crystals charged by the moonlight or people in white gowns trying to contact UFOs by way of telepathy; in other words, 60s-lite.

As intensely irritating flute bursts and harmonica warbles float in and out (sometimes quite randomly) and somebody beats on a pair of bongos, Hanley plays too-trebly, too-vibrato-y and, worst, too-long lead lines on his guitar with no intensity or drive whatsoever. Lazily meandering all over the place, but never reaching any sort of meaningful conclusion, these explorations will leave even the most ferocious jamband-hater praying Phish would reunite. Hanleys fret board work, clearly the focus here, is clichd, unmoving and dull (read: sleep-inducing). To add insult to injury, the lyrics, featuring lines like Clear your mind / hold your thoughts and they will become / dreams unearthed / rise to the sun, are often sung listlessly, as if the two primary vocalists (Hanley and a female singer) were recorded sitting on a porch somewhere in Georgia on an intensely humid, 105 degree afternoon. Actually, this is the vibe most of the record gives off vocals, instruments, and all.

The members of Sound Proof have a sense of what improvisational music is supposed to do (instantaneously translate inspiration from above into notes), just like they have a sense of what a band bio should accomplish (explain a groups origins and style). But they dont have the skills necessary to move from point A to point B, to take these ideas and turn them into concrete, effective vehicles of communication. So, just like their bio, their music comes across not simply as unpolished, but inadequate. In truth, I could barely make it through all 20 (!) tracks on this exceptionally out of touch, entirely tedious disc. The only people that might are probably too busy chanting planetary hymns to bother, anyway.

This album can be purchased at CD Baby

Sound Proof Official Website

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