Scream Hello – “Everything Is Always Still Happening”
Album Reviews | Nov 8th, 2008
Record Label: Red Leader Records
Genre: Indie Pop
Band Link: link
Buy on Amazon.com link
Scream Hello keep getting better, but they have further to go. First the positive: I appreciate that (overall) they embrace jangly indie pop over whiny emo, and some of their tracks have enormous hooks, powered by smart and appealing guitarwork.
But there are misses. Scream Hello still likes to incorporate corny ballady things, and brightly cascading guitars and jazzy drumming don’t save a snooze-fest like “The Kicker.” They also use crescendos after lengthy intros to irritating cliche. The least successful tunes are also their most ambitious: “We Don’t Exist” is an 8-minute mashup of indie, emo, and hardcore that follows a snooze-then-crescendo formula before devolving into a 3-minute doom rock jam. Hideous. “20, 21” hovers around 7 minutes and is pure prog-emo, but not in a good way.
Perhaps to compensate for their patience-testing tendencies, they offer up a bland one-minute punk song called “Business Ethics”, as well as a misguided attempt at hardcore on “Bullets”, which makes them sound like a meatheaded Biohazard-like version of Rage Against the Machine (barf).
But, look, they do have some great songs. The opener is a feel-good jangle-pop tune with a fantastic guitar twang in the right places. “Cocoon” and “Vinegar and Baking Soda” – though both crescendo-after-intro tunes – have a sweet-natured, wistful sound that reminds me of certain Bouncing Souls songs.
Scream Hello mixes things up, genre-wise and pace-wise, to different degrees of success. I applaud experimentation, but their harder-edged stuff sounds forced and dopey and their epic-length tunes are a chore. This is a band that can clearly write brilliant, 3-minute indie-pop songs, if only they resisted pandering to emo and screamo crowds and avoided excessive jamming and intros/breakdowns/outros just for the sake of it.
Bottom Line:
Notable Tracks: Thirty-Five Plums, Cocoon
Overall Rating:
