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Úvodní stránka » ARCHIVE » Variety Lights
Variety Lights — Central Flow  (2012)

Variety Lights – Central Flow
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Album release: June 2012
Record Label: Fire Records
Runtime:    50:32
Tracklist:
01. Starlit 6:18
02. Establishment    3:53
03. Sea Faraway    1:36
04. Invisible Forest    5:34
05. Silent Too Long    3:00
06. Oh Setting Sun    5:20
07. Sell Your Soul    4:18
08. You Are So Famous    2:31
09. Crystal Cove    4:25
10. Feeling All Alone    7:54
11. Infinity Room    5:38
Members:
David Baker - Founding member/singer of Mercury Rev
Will MacLean - Vintage synth addict
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/VarietyLights
Description:
Variety Lights is the band formed by the original Mercury Rev lead singer David Baker. After more than 18 years out of the music scene, Baker returns with "Central Flow." The lead single is "Silent Too Long," which was released as an RSD exclusive.
Review - posted on 06 May 2012 by Dorian Rogers
David Baker hasn’t recorded any music since his Shady project back in 1994 and will not have been heard by most people since he left Mercury Rev after their excellent second album Boces. Central Flow is the debut album by his new act Variety Lights in which he teams up with analogue synth player Will MacLean. I like Baker’s work with Mercury Rev (I prefer Yerself is Steam and Boces to most of the work they did after he left) and I enjoy analogue synths (the Soccer 96 album is one of my favourites this year) but this is pretty dismal stuff.
‘Starlit’ opens proceedings with some sounds that whilst not unpleasant and not exactly pleasant either, and some fairly dreary vocals. The playing seems fairly amateurish (and not in a charming way) and it is hard to tell if the lyrics are interesting as it is fairly hard to hear what Baker is singing about.
Track two, ‘Establishment’, picks things up a bit with some quirky keyboards and multi-tracked vocals that bring Modest mouse to mind. A minute or so in and you’ve pretty much had enough though, it gets tired pretty quickly. This is the pattern for most of the album, songs that start encouragingly different from the track before, with indications of quality, before getting boring pretty quickly.
There are signs of interest in the lyrics on the album but, coupled with Baker’s increasingly tiresome vocals and music that strays too far to the side of incompetence on too many occasions, you find it hard to care what he is singing about after a while. I suspect that MacLean and baker are capable of better than this, and that the style is  deliberately constructed in this slightly ramshackle way.  I don’t mind amateurishness and I can tolerate pretentiousness but when the final output is boring as well that is pretty unforgivable.
I wanted to like this album, I was glad Baker was recording again and think his contribution to Mercury Rev is under-appreciated. However, this album just isn’t good enough and fails to deliver on pretty much every level.
4/10Neon Filler

¶  Review: www.unpeeled.net

Variety Lights — Central Flow  (2012)

 

 

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