Categories : Featured Review, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 3/5 Released: November 21, 2006 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
With the Canadian indie-rock scene as inclusive and community-based as it is, it’s surprising to see how often the term super-group is being thrown around to describe Swan Lake. The group includes Dan Bejar (Destroyer and The New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes).
It should come as no surprise then, given the members’ eclectic backgrounds, that Beast Moans is an experiment in atmospheric mess – noise and bare melodies ram into each other at high speeds until something nearly resembling a song comes out on the other end. The results of the experiment are mixed, but when Swan Lake get it right, as on ‘A Venue Called Rubella,’ they get it right big time. Unfortunately, the band miss just as big as they hit. ‘City Calls’ is as incomprehensible as a song can get – the three bandmates seem to be playing eleven different songs while layering on a melody meant for a twelfth.
Beast Moans is little more than an exercise in raised expectations. Bejar, Krug and Mercer are all brilliant in their own bands, and their joining forces should’ve been no less than thrilling – and at times, it is. The album’s inconsistencies can surely be chalked up to the fact that the album was recorded and mixed in little more than a month. Still, raised expectations are better than no expectations at all.
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