Boy in Static Violet

[Mush; 2007]

Rating: 2/5

Styles: shoegaze, emo, dream pop, techno pop, singer-songwriter
Others: Julian Fane, Courtney Tidwell, Helio Sequence, Guitar

Boy in Static's Alexander Chen walks a damn thin line. I'm cursing my sentimentality right now, because I know that this album is mere degrees away from being yet another overly emotive bit of distorted rock. I swear my reactions shift so rapidly between rapt and groaning that I can't tell where my personal inclinations begin and the music ends. I have a DEEP passion for Slowdive's music and anything that sounds like it. In retrospect, as innately gorgeous and meticulous as Auburn Lull's music is, I overlooked the fact that they sound almost exactly like Slowdive in a number of ways, and perhaps their perfect rating was in no small part due to this fact.

My strongest compliment for Boy in Static would be Chen's vocal timbre and inflection, which -- as it turns out -- is pretty damn similar to Neil Halstead's. So I'm biased. I can't help it, damnit! If I could live my life bodiless in a milky vapor and bring all you with me I most certainly would. Seriously though, something about the perfect mix of dejectedness and enlightenment found in this sort music just plain sends me. It seems bourne completely on a numb sense of futility, only to feel inexplicably uplifting in the end. Sorta like Eraserhead.

I guess I'm starting to realize what Peggy Seger meant when she told Vashti Bunyan to "beware of the ephemeral." But if I dug to deeply into this, I'd be doing a disservice to what's enriched my life all these years. However, I will put aside my love of sheer wonderment for wonderment's sake if only to set y'all straight on Violet. This is an album that gains much of its potency from attention to detail -- a cacophonous swell here, a disorienting electronic beat there. These details swell and recede amid melodic progressions that are and have been extremely commonplace for some 20 years now. These progressions exist along a narrow margin, where heart-on-your-sleeve, cloying, and trite do constant battle.

Violet slips back and forth in this fashion and the tension is ultimately more tiresome than innovative. Chen is obviously a talented sound wielder, but his melodic ideas are more than a little run-of-the-mill. Not to mention the lyrics. It'd be cruel to point out how clichéd and corny these get. So, fellow shoegazers, if you're looking for more music to drift in -- innovative or not -- this will be a satisfying diversion. Everyone else can and perhaps should (those sirens will dash you right into them there rocks, sailors!) let this one pass them by. It's pretty inessential when all is said and done. It's way too close to being emo throwaway stuff. The name alone sounds like an emo band. It's really a shame when music so evocative is so marginal. But there you have it.

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