mSm® CULTURE

Custom

Tyler Bradford
Culture Editor

 

 

Fast
(Artist Direct)

The music on Fast is, for the most part, pretty boring. It’s the sort of
tepid modern rock fare that tragically seems to appeal to the musical
tastes of a lot of teenage males these days. The album sounds like the
Fun Loving Criminals if their sense of humor were replaced by wry
sexist cynicism. At least Custom (aka Duane Lavold) has a cool voice-
-almost an amalgamation of Joe Strummer of the Clash and Mike
Ness of Social Distortion. Backed by Billy Howardel and Josh Freeze,
both from A Perfect Circle, and Duncan Shiek, the album is smooth
and polished and ready for the radio. I’d write more about the album,
but its blatant misogynistic attitude made me want to throw up, so |
turned it off half way through. It’s that good.

 

Phantom Planet

Tyler Bradford
Culture Editor

 

The Guest
(Epic)

The Guest is a nice album. It has sickly sweet pop-hook melodies
that make you want to sing along, it has some chunky guitar riffs in the
right places, it features (fairly) intelligent lyrics and three-part har-
monies...what’s not to love? Well, other than the fact that Weezer,
Travis, Sloan, and every other power-pop band on the radio have
already trod down this path before. But really, it’s nice. You'll even find
yourself humming the songs in the shower.

The album starts off with the sugary summertime goodness of
“California” and its infectious chorus and then slides downhill from
there. The band is at its best churning out pop hooks and high calorie
goodness; songs such as “Hey Now Girl’ and “One Ray of Sunlight”
may not be breaking any new ground, but at least they’re honest and
not full of pseudo-angst. When the group ventures outside the land of
delectable harmonies and sweetly innocent themes, they come up with
mixed results. The low-key ruminations of “Turn Smile Shift Repeat”
find songwriter and lead singer Alex Greenwald walking down the
same dour path as Thom Yorke, but with less success. After the bright
and cheery opening tracks, the album disappointingly ends poorly with
the dissonant clanging of “Wishing Well” and the death whimper of
“Something Is Wrong’.

Curiously it’s hard to imagine this quintet ever making it out of the
pack if it weren’t for the fact that they’re comprised of actors (Jason
Swartzman of Rushmore fame plays the drums) and models (lead
singer Greenwald was featured in GAP ads) to give them a buzz. Still,
you shouldn’t hold it against them, the music’s nice even if it doesn’t
break any new ground.