Dissolver

Not particularly original album featuring straightforward electric guitar indie rock songs with touches of piano and layered vocals, fleshed out through production to make the songs sound bigger than they actually are. One of the members (Kyp Malone) is from TV on the Radio, and a lot of the music presented here does sound similar to them, with a heavier classic rock influence. Liner notes describe the band as "experimental noise-popsters," but this release is neither experimental nor noisy– there's just one collage track– "hipster popsters" is a better description. Picks: 1, 2 (watch out for the FCC), 10

*1) (2:33) Nice intro and lots of "whoo hoo"s throughout; pretty loud with
*2) (3:19) Vocals at the beginning are reminiscent of Silver Jews/Pavement; more of a ballad than anything else here, driven by piano; FCC "fucking" once near the end of the song.
3) (3:21) Like a mix of Yo La Tengo and TV on the Radio– soft vocals intermingled with some straight out of TVOTR.
4) (7:02) Too long and repetitive for its own good, sounds like Ziggy-era Bowie.
5) (5:10) Guitarist sounds like he's trying to pull some bluesy classic rock tricks but the vocals and bass don't match. Vocals very complainy.
6) (4:04) This is where the experimental/noise comes in, but it's not particularly interesting; based around the high-pitched guitar that comes in at the end of the previous track.
7) (5:14) Squealing guitar throughout is a bit too much; sounds like kids who listened to bluesy Zeppelin solos and thought it would be cool to add piano and distorted vocals.
8) (2:52) Light folk pop that transitions into "In the Flesh" a minute in, "Buddy, buddy, buddy" yelled over crowd noise until the 40-second fade out begins.
9) (6:04) Sort of builds up and gets louder as it goes, with more and more instruments/voices being added in to support repetitive vocals.
*10) (4:06) Uptempo track that sounds more like a 90s indie track than anything else here; nice melodies throughout. At 2:30 everything gets quiet before building back up to the climax.