Rogue Wave, "Descended Like Vultures"

Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures

Indie rock band Rogue Wave's CD, Descended Like Vultures, is bland, middle-of-the-road music. For the horizontally inclined only.

Indie band Rogue Wave's Descended Like Vultures is a technically proficient, but bland, offering.

Descended Like Vultures is not unpleasant to listen to, but it's not memorable either. This is music to play while doing your homework - it won't distract you from your chemistry lesson.

This CD lollops along at a plodding pace. The strongest track is the opener, "Bird on a Wire", which does have a nice rolling, if generic, melody. But it never transcends the clichéd phrase of its title. "10-1" tries to pep things up, with it's speedier tempo and crashing cymbals, but it's like a hyperactive kid on a pogo stick: too forced, and painful to witness. However, "10-1" does produce the (brief) highlight of the album when it dissolves into chaos approximately 2 minutes in, complete with church bells and what sounds like a child's flute.

Other songs suffer from being too precious in their construction and vocalization, such as "Catform" and "Love's Lost Guarantee"; these two are especially samey. Some clever turns of phrase, such as "Love comes like Kennedy cursed" ("Love's Lost Guarantee"), and "Geriatric at 20 years old" ("Bird on A Wire") reward the listener once in a while, but overall these songs go down like so much cotton candy - airy and insubstantial. You'll have a hard time humming the tunes to yourself afterwards.

If you like lo-fi music, you may like this album. Still, there are better alternatives; skip this and go directly to The Doves' The Last Broadcast if you're looking for dreamy, lush music with a spiritual edge. Or The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" for reflective and melancholy (or simply the whole of Pet Sounds). For lonesome, transcendental bliss, give Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" from Bridge Over Troubled Water a try.

"Bird on a Wire" and "Publish My Love" in particular sound like something that would've been snatched up by the TV series Dawson's Creek. I cannot recommend this album, unless you're on Xanax or comatose.

Rogue Wave is: Zach Rogue (vocals, guitar), Pat Spurgeon (drums, keyboard, samples, vocals), Evan Farrell (bass, vocals, keys, guitar), and Gram LeBron (guitar, keyboard, vocals, drums).

The band has a website and a MySpace page.

SubPop

Rating: 2/5

Highlights: "Bird on A Wire", "10-1"

Similar to: Simon and Garfunkel, The Beach Boys

First published on Suite 101