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The Uptowns:
The Beast
I just finished off a big glass of milk. Milk never tasted so good, and I was really thirsty after that spicy taco. But now Im still thirsty and milk just isnt quite as appealing as it was when I was really craving something to simmer down the spices. Yet here I am with another full glass that has lost its appeal. What I need is a change, something to make this milk better. Change is good but it doesnt take much to transform into something new. If I could rid the music world of just one thing, it would be to abolish all words like unique, different or fresh. I would then replace them with such words as change, transform and manipulate. Too often musicians think that in order to get anywhere they have to be different than anything else out there, and they set that as their focus, often causing them to lose sight of some of the more simple things. This six-pack from Shoreline, WA is on the right track. They are in fact unique by the dictionary definition of the word. However, being different does not immediately prove to the listener that you have something good to offer. Fade in beach sounds. Add in a little bit of that bubbly base and the dance happy keyboard that we all associate with ska. Queue the horns. Next add in some vocals in sort of a lazy dance fashion followed by backup singers in the form of a shouting audience. Then halfway through the song, it gets a little dream jazzy then morphs into something with more of a Mexican flavor and some white-boy funkified rap. Fade out beach sounds. In the fourth track, Need Myself a Friend they trade the horns, keyboard and bass for an acoustic guitar. Now the lazy dance vocals are even lazier. It sounds like he needs himself a friend to help him with that song. The last three-fifths of this album reside within The Beast Suite. One of the earlier songs in the suite, Chuga Chuga Says the Train, an odd R&B-infused ska tune, earns points for the beat that stems from train sounds. Although, the band loses said points for the Santana-like guitar solo ending yikes! And I dont even know what the hell the next track, Is it, is. Towards the end of the suite, Sleep my Child, Everything Will Be Fine, has beautifully arranged acoustic guitar strings that back vocals that have dropped all trace of laziness or dance. Where did this song come from? It sounds like nothing else on this album. These people have no idea who they are or what they are doing. At times this album has some shining moments; in others, they just sound hopelessly lost and ridiculously cheesy. They have some talent, but this just sounds like a huge experimental album gone wrong. They really need to take a step back and stop focusing on being unique and think more about transforming what already works and making it their own. Pass me that bottle of Hersheys syrup over there, would you?
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