Other Victorians
Lookout!, 2004
rating: 2.5/5
reviewer: willcoma


I have a big problem with records like this. So many interesting things going on texturally. Such a fine grasp of how to make moody, reflective melodic progressions really go. Instrumentally it is nearly impossible to fault this band. Their name is bland, but there've been worse. But the vocals are wrong, wrong, wrong. I have the same issues with At the Drive-In and their offspring The Mars Volta. Hell, I could even site Queens of the Stone Age as an example of music that kind of jumps out at you behind the most plain, clichéd vocal stylings you could come up with on your own.

Singer Matt Rist has been compared to Billy Corgan, but his delivery puts me in a very Ben Folds place (only slightly more high-pitched). The music at times rivals Interpol's best material, but Interpol possesses a much more interesting vocalist. The ringing guitar figure in "John West" combined with the attempted lowering of the singer's voice (he actually sounds better when he does this) is strongly reminiscent of Interpol. The progression sounds like Outhud at their most anthemic. The lyrics are too discernable outside of the sultry moodiness of the music, so what you get to hear is essentially, well, dumb lyrics. Sure, most rock lyrics are, but they don't usually come in as clearly as Rist's.

Evening is not a bad band for being on a label that tends to lean towards speedy punk hookers with another sort of (less appealing than Farrell's) nasally vocals about "my girlfriends new boyfriend" or something equally pedestrian. I used to listen to Bad Religion, Rancid, and NOFX, so I'm not exempt from this kind of music, but I can no longer say in all sureness that the stuff's at all discernable from the myriad of other bands ransacking power chords. Evening is a notch above these bands because they at least try to do something different.

The best probable way to look at this failed project might be to consider what could come about on a future release if they changed or removed the vocals altogether. "Wither in Bloom" (the one instrumental track on the release) along with the tight, absorbing guitar work elsewhere, give me the impression that Evening could make an instrumental rock album on the level of something like Heroic Doses. Otherwise, Other Victorians is merely a disheartening example of wasted potential.

1. Being is Automatic
2. Placing You Center
3. Vivixc
4. Breast Milk Saves 16 at Sea
5. Darmstadt
6. John West
7. Vieu Finder
8. I Want Everything
9. That's Not a Melody
10. Wither in Bloom
11. Run Memory
12. A Given Time Part I
13. A Given Time Part II