Press Play – Album Reviews

From First to LastFrom First to Last**

Not quite pop, not quite metal, From First to Last can best be defined as … “petal”? These Warped Tour acolytes stick to their formula on this album, their fifth full-length effort and the first for the titanic Suretone Records. Layers of angst piled upon layers of distortion have been the band’s M.O. from the beginning, and the 11 tracks on From First to Last show little deviation from this pattern.

Borderline ridiculous song titles (e.g. “I Once Was Lost, But Now I’m Profound”) don’t help their case, and without so much as a token acoustic track to break up the monotony, this album loses its luster well before completing its 39-minute running time. If anything, From First to Last provides an interesting artifact from the final days of the major-label system, but that doesn’t compensate for the fact that this music just isn’t very good pop…. I mean “metal”…I mean…”petal”?

-Shane Danaher

Graham MacraeGraham Macrae**1/2

Graham Macrae’s music falls somewhere between the weirdo folk of Devendra Banhart and the sleepy drones of Iron and Wine. Unfortunately, “sleepy” is a hard sell, and although Macrae wields finger-picked riffs and mumbled vocals with more-than-average competence, he still falls somewhat short of securing a berth on my “sleepy-time” playlist.

Macrae is at his best when he throws percussion and studio shenanigans into the mix, resulting in songs such as “I Can’t Trust You” and “Future Days.” Had he focused this album on the more driving aspects of his songcraft, the results might have put him over the singer-songwriter “threshold of merit.” As things are, though, a majority of Macrae’s work drifts pleasantly off into the ether, where it neither offends nor delights but sits as an ephemeral backing track for the day to day.

–Shane Danaher

Moomaw26**

Nathan Moomaw had an interesting idea: The year he turned 26, he would record a song every month, at the end releasing an album of his self-reflexive folk recordings. Well, he’s now 27 and he’s met his goal, releasing 26 just this past week.

The songs range in sound from quiet, hushed guitar-folk comparable to Iron and Wine (see the first track “April”) to more straight-up pop tunes (see “October”). The album’s entire recording is appropriately lo-fi and scratchy, with a gauzy veneer that obscures Moomaw’s plain tone and lackluster songwriting. A few of the tracks on 26 are enjoyable guitar-pop gems, but due to the structure of the project (12 months, 12 songs), what would have been a great EP is instead a lackluster album.

–Ed Johnson