Search - All Night Radio :: Spirit Stereo Frequency

Pretty Wild

Blackberries | PA | 01/22/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I heard and enjoyed a few songs by the Beachwood Sparks, liked the cover art of this album, and the sample of the first song sounded really good. Basically, I bought this album on a few whimsical notions. Sometimes those loosely linked factors that I consider when buying new music lead me to awesome records. I don't know if I'd go as far as saying Spirit Stereo Frequency is 'awesome', but it is quite good, and has several great moments- the opener Daylight Till Dawn being one of them. When I first listened to the line "I wanna wake up in the morning" resound on this first track, I became very enthused about my purchase, as this song sounded so canorous to my ears. We're On Our Wave kept the good vibes flowing with a sweet opening guitar riff and a permeating, irresistable mellowness. Fall Down 7 threw me out of my groove. There are a lot of cool things going on: the crowd cheers, the horns, the Mexican lyrics, and the heavy reverb. For some reason though, I just felt like this song was overloaded and too heavy. It's also about two minutes too long. I would have liked this one if it was toned down a bit more. The next track, You'll Be Down, has some catchy, chugging guitar riffs, but it obnoxiously breaks out of its cool, rocking feel and drifts back into slower, hazy psychedelia. It's not a bad track, just too unfocused. Sky Bicycle is very nice. It conjures Simon and Garfunkel's 69th Street Bridge Song with its gentle, lovely sound and abounding peacefulness. Oh, When? is all over the board. Like most of the songs on this album, it has so much to it, but again, I think the lack of cohesiveness in the structure of these song is irritating. Sad K. might be the best tune on the whole cd. Like Daylight Till Dawn, it has a stunningly good chorus, beginning with the pertinently optimistic lines, "Hey we can find our love in the tears." Anchovya Suite is a brief, pretty little ballad preceding the the even prettier Winter Light. The instrumentation in parts of this song is really beautiful. As funny as it may sound, at times I think this song sounds like a bizarre, nebulous cover of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The coda, All Night Radio, starts off pretty good, but following the precedent established by the previous tracks, digresses into superfluous noodling. My major complaints with Spirit Stereo Frequency include the excessively amorphous individual song structures (some may argue that this makes the songs, but I'm not very fond of it), the inability to end a song- most are watered down by the time the needless, experimental excursions come to a close and finally, the omnipresent echos and reverbs. If some of these numbers were more lucid, they'd really be indispensable pop gems. With these negative aspects of the recording said, I still think Spirit Stereo Frequency is a very cool record worth picking up. Daylight Till Dawn, Sad K. and Winter Light alone make it worthwhile. To their credit, Dave Scher and Jimi Hey did something with this album that popular musicians rarely do nowadays- establish their own new, creative sound. This album is definitely overflowing with creativity, and it's hard to compare with anything else out there today. Again, I'd say with all factors being considered, this recording is a good buy."