Sceneazine.com
Darlia
“I’ve Never Been To Ohio”
Music Reviews
CLOUDSHIP
“Sail to Heaven”
A pop/R&B singer and a metal musician
walk into a recording studio… no, it’s not
the beginning of a joke. The two members of
Cloudship, Brandon Freeman and Jonathan
Napoles, had been friends for most of their
lives, according to their press release, and
started making music together because they
were ?the only full-time musicians in their
circle of friends.”
Rather than do some odd mash-up of
the duo’s past primary influences, Cloudship bring to the table a somewhat minimal
and definitely unique sound centered around acoustic guitars, atmospheric Eno-esque keyboards and Freeman’s soulful vocals. “City Boy” deliberately contradicts the
song’s title with a folk-guitar stomp, while “The Hangover” is the group’s take on blues
feeling without falling into the trap of the standard blues chord sequence.
The almost twelve-minute long epic closer “Out of the Darkness” trades in the
acoustic guitar for some distorted bluesly single-note riffs, and puts the synthesizers
to the side in favor of some John Lennon-style grand piano chords for the first part of
the song, before switching gears to a 5/8 time signature briefly. The rest of the track
continues to change pace in an almost prog-rock-like manner without relying on unnecessary filler, before returning to the way the piece started, with the Lennon piano
chords and single-note electric guitar. It’s a fitting conclusion to a fittingly unique
mini-album.
Cupla
“My Stand”
Cupla makes a stand against bullying in “My
Stand”. It’s a heart string-tugging song played
to slideshow-like images of bullied children
with informative statistics throughout. The
Pictures of the kids are definitely taken by a
professional photographer and look smooth
and clean. The transitions fit comfortably and
the statistic writing is crisp. I can see this as a
bullying PSA on T.V. or something. The only
problem I can possibly see with this video is
that some of the pictures are different sizes but it doesn’t take anything away from the
videos message. I rate it a solid 4 out of 5.
I think I just found my favorite 90’s style
alternative band. Darlia just amazed me with
“I’ve Never Been To Ohio”. It has a sound that
is like Nirvana and Oasis had sex and gave
birth to Darlia. It may be my inner teenage
rebel coming out but, this is a beautiful 90’s
inspired rock fest of astronomical proportion. Any possible problem is that I couldn’t
really relate to the lyrics. It’d be a cool song to
show my 90’s music fan friends. But not really a song I’d put on when I’m looking for meaning in my music. Don’t get me wrong,
everything in the song is produced and recorded perfectly it just doesn’t have a real
lyrical meaning to it unless you’ve never been to Ohio. Definitely a solid 4.5 out of 5.
Axle Creek
“The Journey Home”
Ax