| Sunday Flood |
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Through the compounding frustration and lethargy of day jobs and social monotony Sunday Flood continues to make music. Most local bands don't last a year. Some never even leave their basements and garages. Even bands that become successful rarely last for more than two or three albums, but Sunday Flood has defied all odds, sticking together for the better part of ten years and still going strong.
SSS003
Velvet Is Falling
SSS020
Advisory
Metal Song
| High Bias |
Appleton, Wisconsin's own Sunday Flood carve out a smart anti-rock sleeper with Advisory, their second full-length CD. A trio, they dish out an addictive sheen of anxiety without a guitar solo, harmony vocal, or sing-along chorus to be found. Probably the primary hook at work is singer/guitarist Eric Krueger's longing tenor. Like Helmet's Page Hamilton, Krueger has limited range, but makes very good use of what he's got. Krueger and bassist Mike Allen write stream of emotion lyrics such as, "There'll be nothing left for you to destroy/For everything you build/You damn the soil" from "Broken Predicate." Song after song, lyric after lyric, these angular words and sinewy arrangements combine with Krueger's voice to work their way into the heart and head.
| Collective Zine |
Oh man, I like this, I like this a lot. Modern-day emo-rock, but not too much emphasis on the rock, and surprisingly not ripping off the Get Up Kids or Braid. Music to hold someone's hand to.
Most of the time this just drifts dreamily along, ebbing gently like the tide (how very emo of me.), but sometimes building up into rocking parts with desperate, impassioned screams, but not in that Boy Sets Fire way that's being way over-done right now. This all strikes me as being a big mash of Sunny Day Real Estate, (but without Jeremy's indecipherable mushmouth vocals), Falling Forward/Elliott and the guitar stylings of the Edge from U2, you know, that reverbed, phased to fuck sound he gets. Cool enough to make me prick up my ears and sniff the air, and different enough for you to think about maybe not buying that shitty rip off record you were about to and take a goddamn chance for once.
Good good, very melodious, and just about one of the only emo albums I've bought and enjoyed recently (ok, so maybe not so recently, like six months ago.) that hasn't been from more than five years ago or sounded like it should be. Lap it up my puppies.
Interesting facts:
Not only is the packaging silver and black (sweet of sweets), but the cd comes in a very nice cloth thing, so it doesn't get scratched. Very much the kind of thing one may use to wipe ones spectacles, or to seek comfort in by rubbing against the skin between top lip and nose.
Mr. T is accredited in the thanks list: the T is fo PAIN!!! indeed.
I have just split the plastic sleeve of this by cack-handedly jamming the cardboard bit back in. Twat.
