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On their previous released album and EP this California group may not have had the most original material (they were largely informed by The Verve, Mazzy Star, Spacemen 3 and especially The Brian Jonestown Massacre) but they wrote really great songs that made you willing to look the other way if they sounded too familiar. They even had one song, "What Goes Around", where they matched the abilities of their influences, if not exceeded them. Judging by the content and title of their second album, Life & Death, the band are looking towards larger issues this time out; tackling questions like "what is life about?" and "why is the world so messed up?" Certainly these are important questions, but the group goes about exploring them all wrong. A shame really given that the album is really well recorded and their singer's voice has never sounded better.
There are two main culprits in the album's failure: Firstly, there's the lyrics. I get the feeling that they wrote the lyrics to inject some kind of earnest optimism into these cynical times but they just sound like the kind of vague hippie sloganeering you would find in the margins of a college freshman's notebook. Some of the worst examples: "They've Got The Money/We've Got The Love" on "Do You Feel Free?" and "I know we do what we do and we do what we can/ This life just won't be the same for every man" on "Everybody Live". Secondly, there's the pacing. There's a dreary slow tempo that the band employs which would be OK for a few songs, but is terminally boring when used on all of Life & Death's ten songs. Even within each song there isn't much variety, as they all end pretty much just as they started without much happening in between the two points; as if the band were coasting on musical cruise control.
DAVID MANSDORF
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