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West: Trailduster
After listening to the album by this New York City based band, I was torn. The songs were good, and the CD flowed nicely. Unfortunately, West doesnt really offer anything that we didnt already hear during the grunge/alterna-rock rock boom of the early 1990s. Their sound is primarily made up of fuzzed out guitars and somewhat cynical spoken-while-theyre-sung vocals. West consists of Claremont Taylor on guitars and vocals, Wellington Taylor on bass, and Michael Zimberg on drums. Most of the music was written by Claremont, and the songs themselves are pretty good. The bands bio calls their sound death country music, and the desert (specifically Nevada) is a running theme throughout many of the discs songs. Taylors vocals do a great job of expressing the desperation inherent in the lyrics. Theres the obvious Pixies and Replacements influence, but I can also hear some Sebadoh and Pavement in the way he uses his voice. With this sort of music, the bass and drums are there merely to provide backbone, and they do this very well.
My main
problem with the CD is that it isnt very unique. The band is good, but the
songs sound like ones weve heard many times before. I dont think that theyre
necessarily concerned with being groundbreaking or innovative, but I do wish
that I could have heard some stuff that I hadnt heard numerous times over the
last ten years. The songs begin and end without much happening in-between in
terms of dynamics or even melody. This is why I had mixed emotions while
listening to this disc: on one hand, it was nice to hear a band making this type
of music again, because its what I grew up on. On the other, why would someone
want to listen to a new band if they arent offering anything different from the
records you already have? Fans of this kind of music should check this band
out, but if you are looking for something that pushes the boundaries of rock
music, you would be better off looking somewhere else.
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