DELUSIONAL

Delusional
   There seems to have developed a misimpression about Steve and Abe’s Record Reviews. You see, I agreed to review music from independent artists as a way of encouraging my fellow basement tapers, and giving them some positive feedback. So I’ve always tried to find something nice to say in these Bribery Reviews.
   But now I’m getting submissions from bands with managers and record labels, who send me CDs with cover art done on a printing press (not a laser printer) and press kits. They must figure I’m an actual writer with some sort of influence on my readers, as opposed to a slacker composing record reviews to avoid useful work who gets 35 hits a day and sometimes manages to piss off most of those people.
   So anyway, I figure if a band has enough support to be sending me glossy photos and tour schedules, they don’t need me going out of my way to find something positive to say about their album. Because with Delusional, I’m hard pressed.
   There’s nothing wrong with the band, I guess. They’re certainly tight (even if the bass player is spectacularly unimaginative) and the singer has a certain geeky charm. But I’ve listened to this disc six times, and I can only remember how one of the songs goes. For example, there are songs titled “First Song” and “Last Song”; I presume one might be a variation on the other, but I can’t remember either of them.
   The drummer goes his best to inject some energy into the tunes, but with melodies as indistinct as these, the listener just can’t get ahold of the music. I will say that “Love and a 45” has a certainly doomy grandeur, imparted by the insistent keyboard riff.
Delusional’s got the right attitude – short, brisk and poppy – even if the acoustic guitar sounds like it was recorded using a boombox condenser microphone. But, in the immortal words of Mark Prindle, “playing la-de-da pop music and writing timeless melodies are two different things.”

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