Thursday, May 12, 2011

Album Review: The Oh Sees - Castlemania



Sorbo listens to more lo-fi today and thankfully this is a lot better, definitely different in sound and it all goes together so well for a lo fi album, in short its fun as fuck. So its a new album from The Oh Sees its their seventh borderline prolific perhaps? meh it doesn't matter.

What I love about this album the most is how much fun they seem to be happening while playing, immediately with track one you get an immense sense of fun going on, you can hear it in their playing and the track has me enjoying this listen straight away. The acoutic guitar and tambourine have you bobbin your head with the vocals coming through great, its certainly a strong start with what is about to hit you on this listen. This next track continues what was started, this time they speed it a little and again have you sensing enjoyment in the music. The lo-fi qualities are great, you can sense that its just that but it's not dragging the album down because they're not trying too hard to be underground maaaan.

Track 3 is kind of a cool mess of a track, the guitars meshing in weird ways with a simple drum beat to accompany it, I like it and the vocals on top of this all make it probably the best track so far. We finally get a greater sense of electronics being used in track 4 Corrupted Coffin, the synth and atmospheric noises that are incorporated make it very different from the first three tracks and the production is very cool. My favourite track on the album is track 5 Pleasure Blimp, the acoustic guitar is back, so's the tambourine and electronic sounds top it off to something great.

At only 39 minutes and a whopping 16 tracks, they've crammed a lot of music into what could be seen is a tad on the shorter thing, the lo-fi indie rock that is going on is fast frenetic and unfortunately later in the album it becomes just a little samey, thankfully it still is an incredibly fun album overall, there are moments of brilliance later in the album the title track is superb with the guitar sounding really cool and AA Warm Breeze brings the acoustic back with it sounding a little country, thankfully not too country.

The album ends on What Are We Craving? a sound that keeps its lo-fi roots but delves into subtle dream pop moments in around a slowed acoustic setting. Great fun on this album and at less than 40 minutes has many fun things incorporated.

Overall Rating 8/10

No comments:

Post a Comment