Idlehood | Idlehood

Family Average: 3.5/7

Ooooo. We got some spooky album art up here from our pals IDLEHOOD and their debut album, IDLEHOOD. Idlewood is a band hailing from the fantastic land we call “New York” Ever heard of it? City of windy lights? Something like that whatever, but hey these guys got some rock in their pocket. Was the family feeling the darkness that these guys were dishing?

Listen along on their SoundCloud and read on to find out:

Uh Huh. I am absolutely thriving on this dark energy. From the start I was excited to hear some kind of influence from proto-metal bands like Blue Cheer, and Cream. I thought to myself, “If this album just carried on the way it is now in these initial tracks, I would be happy with that”. For the most part it did. Tiny bits of punk started to seep in towards the middle of the album, and I was again still pretty happy with everything going on. The sound was balanced.

“I Don’t Mind” stands out as my favorite track on the album. I can just picture heaps of concert goers screaming the chorus and catching their breath during the lovely little guitar riffs. Gosh darn they really bring the house down on that one.Much love to the drums throughout the entire album, perfectly toeing the line between dissonance, and atmospheric.

My only complaint would come from the appearance of a couple of tracks that I felt detracted from the overall impact of the album. Tracks 5, 6, and 7, seem to be a little out of place. I wouldn't say it is because they are worse, or better than the other songs, they just seem to be painting with a different pallet. Other than that super cool nice job!

4/7

This was an interesting ride. The first part of the album had some Black Sabbath vibes with a solid amount of punk coursing through its veins—something I can totally get behind, but at times I felt as if I was on some sort of grating, monotone Merry-Go-Round. The instrumentation and vocals just kept looping with little to no variation. This came to an almost screeching halt near the fourth song, “Life’s Just a Game.” Suddenly, there was a palpable shift. They threw me a bone (ha ha.) with “Dog Song,” skewing more indie-alt which is right up my alley. It hit the balance of having a catchy hook with interesting  instrumentals that kept me on my toes. I would have liked the album to follow this trajectory, but also appreciate the various styles they have incorporated. While I currently struggle to discern exactly who and what they are as band due to the disparate tracks, I’ll be interested to see how they hone their sound further.

3/7

Yes, we have some energy. Yes, we have power. I could listen to this album while walking to school and get ready to punch somebody in the face. Sadly, an album cannot thrive on energy alone.

I really wish that there was possibly some peer review before this album came out; just because one goes through the recording process and puts tens upon hundreds of hours into a track, it doesn't really mean that they have to post it. But who can say? I mean with punk I always have trouble finding the fine line between low-fi and just poor production/ recording ethics. Also , when the vocals become the focal point on a track during this album it can get a little shaky. This is not to detract from some of the songs here “I Don't Mind" is a stand out. And while I should complain about the lack of consistency, I still felt myself waiting for the band to create something that was out of their comfort zone.

Here comes the review and in its number form:

4/7

At the beginning I was like no please, too much, super lame, but not completely giving up on it there was something there. The guitar—there’s something appealing about this chaos. I don't really like it as a whole, but I'm not completely turned off by it. It was charming in some way.

“Life is Just a Game” is when it started to turn around for me I appreciated the guitar more here.

“Tell Me Baby” okay now, I like, the guitar en especial.

“Dog Song” where in the heck did that come from? That was absolutely my favorite song on the album.

The album started off just deeply offending my state of being and then grew on me. I’m here for “Dog Song.”

3/7

I like when bands sound like they’re having fun with producing their music. That said, some tightening up would help with their overall performance. I know that a less than stellar audio quality is often utilized by punk bands to set a vibe, but the first couple tracks on this album sound like they were straight-up recorded in a basement. If there was some variation in the levels it’d really make the music pop. At times all the instruments mesh together too much and just become noise, like in  The vocals have that good ol’ unproduced sound, but the singer needs to vary the emotion in his voice. Most of it was pretty monotone. Like, yeah it had energy behind it but it felt muted, there was no up and down mobility. The lyrics also left something to be desired, but I can give that a pass because the instruments were the main draw for this album. “I Don’t Mind,” for example was pretty catchy, but the mundane vocals over top of it tarnishes it so I needed to give it a closer listen to really get to it.

“Life is Just a Game” brings some variety to the monotony, and is where I think the singer is the most varied (Ego does have more vocal range but again, the energy was lacking). It got me boppin my head a bit, it was a fun listen.

This band’s got some promise, but they need a considerable amount of polish to really shine.

4/7

The first two songs were very muddled and messy. They sounded like were going for a live sound but it came off like they put no effort into pulling together a clean recording.

The vocals were also a little rough. Glad I kept listening because with "Life is just a Game" it proved to be a much cleaner and well composed punk song. "Tell me baby" showed they could be a bit diverse. It really showed a softer side and this is where it reminded me of kind of a Punk/Grunge combo band. "Dog song" was also a nice punk song. It reminded me of Crowded House a bit here.  I have given this advice before, find what you are best at and get really good at that and stop jumping around. I give this a

3.5/7