BANDS:

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

Stereocean: Blow Away Yr Regrets
[Energy Castle]

This is the album that you play for your friend who only listens to bands like Luna, Magnetic Fields and Yo La Tengo. The opening track, "Blues for Ayn Rand" is pure Yo La Tengo-style self- indulgence. The sprawling song accomplishes in eight and a half minutes what should have taken four minutes. Then again, the band could not be considered indie-pop or dream-pop if they didn't stretch things out a bit. The trio essentially features two frontmen. Tim Gordy and Josh Davis each share vocal duties, and one will play the bass guitar while the other plays lead guitar. In the song "Hundreds of Threes" there is a monster guitar solo that spans for the majority of the track. Musical masturbation? Maybe, but that should not stop someone from headbanging to the song. With "You Don't Move Me," the band returns to being Jesus and Mary Chain wannabes, and they should really take that as a compliment. So few bands can pull off the whole spacey-guitars-with-whiny-muddled-lyrics thing and still have professionalism. "Hammerdom" features the classic Galaxie 500 type of noodling that drones for what seems to be forever but shies away from being a real bore by the end. What is irritating is "Reasons to Fix a Broken Toy." No one said it was acceptable to implement a song title that has nothing to do with the song itself. Actually, consider the lyrics, "It's all work when you're buying/Please and get out/Cutting away/Cutting a way out" and the words become senseless. The album is a worthwhile investment for fans of all the aforementioned groups for the simple fact that those fans are always searching for another band with that same trademark sound. This is so that they can prove to fellow indie rockers that they do in fact listen to more than seven bands. Add Stereocean, and now they have eight bands that rock without rocking.

This album can be purchased at Energy Castle

Stereocean Official Website

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