Customer Reviews

A Failed Attempt To Alter History

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"16 years till 40" will leave you singing. Eric writes songs that people can relate to. Death and life and the feeling of time passing you by. Revolving around the idea to live life with no regrets. Oswald has the best of both worlds. Great vocals and the greatest mix of drums, guitar, bass, and keyboard. That has come in a long time.

"Candidate", is an aggressive beat song, with a catchy baseline. It is a song with qualities, very slow parts that build up until the climax, which is a great musical delight.

The great keyboard work on "2 paintings 2 songs", will move your body into a feeling. You won't feel lonely listening to this song.

The whole album goes together very well. It is a solid album with great songs, and that is very hard to come by these days. Most bands produce that one hit song. Oswald can produce a whole quality album.

Posted on Fri, Mar. 01, 2002 Contra Costa Times

A conspiracy of talent swirls around Oswald
TONY HICKS: Pop Music Critic

OSWALD GUITARIST Dale Cucchiaro pauses when I tell him why I paged him only minutes after we hung up the phone. I don't blame him.

I want to know where the band's name comes from. Although I have a pretty good idea, my boss still clings to the dusty old theory that writers should verify things they put in the newspaper.

"Well ... it ... I don't know," says Cucchiaro, a UC Berkeley student and 1996 graduate of Danville's San Ramon Valley High School. "It's kind of something we're all fascinated in -- the various conspiracies surrounding (the JFK shooting)."

Cucchiaro just finished 15 minutes of conversation about his band, how they record and their artistic interests. Now this newspaper guy wants to talk conspiracies.

I won't make Dale into some conspiracy nut -- because he's not. He goes on to explain that drummer Chad Cochran knew someone who had a dog named Oswald, and it sounded like a pretty good name.

Pretty good name for a very good band. It's another reason to hope that maybe good -- and serious -- music is on its way back. And, for being such an unserious guy, I couldn't be happier.

Movements and sounds usually take a few years to filter down to club musicians, typically with varied results. Oswald plays mood music -- call it Radiohead-influenced if you'd like, but that's not doing Oswald justice. It's so much more accessible, with elements of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, the Cure and probably dozens more.

"There's a lot of bands out there, but there's a succession of bands interesting in songwriting," says Cucchiaro. "The Beatles, Nirvana, Radiohead ... that's where the influences come in."

Oswald just released "A Failed Attempt to Alter History," a well-produced record that was recorded entirely in Cucchiaro's Martinez living room. Though the quality is outstanding for originating in someone's house, the recording wasn't without its problems.

"The initial plan was to be done in a month," he says. "Then the computers crashed and we nearly lost some vocal tracks. We actually lost two songs."

Those songs will have to wait for the next Oswald release. The first one has lots of great moments, from the artsy and moody title track (which is where they'll get a lot of the Radiohead comparisons) to "16 Years Until 40," which sounds like Pearl Jam delicately taking on a Cure song. "No Grapes" is the record's high point, with a hooky chorus emerging from a built-up and richly-delivered guitar progression that could be on the most discriminating of rock radio stations.

Cucchiaro began playing with brothers Eric (vocals) and Chad Cochran (drums) at San Ramon Valley High in the mid-'90s. They drifted off to college, but managed to keep the music alive until about a year ago, when they teamed with Michigan natives Paul Zeroh (keyboards) and Mike Allen (bass), whom Chad met at art school.

The songs are about alienation and other daily topics that strike them. Oswald has been working on perfecting the art of translating a good record into a live show where, unlike the studio, the band "lets the emotion dictate where we're going to go. But we're total perfectionists in the studio...

From the very first moments of Oswald's debut album, A Failed Attempt to Alter History, you know you're about to get hit with something big. Little did I know the magnitude of what I would eventually be broadsided with. The album begins with tense acoustic guitars, slowly building layer after layer until the the whole band climaxes into the equivalent of a musical assassination. The fact that Oswald manages to continue the momentum throughout the next 35 minutes is even more impressive. The tension builds up throughout every song, rising to a culmination that completely engulfs the listener, and forces him to come back for more. Even the delicate, acoustic subtleties of the album's masterpiece "2 Paintings, 2 Songs" aren't lost amidst the paranoid apprehension that swirls throughout. And when the album finally culminates with the frenzied dynamics at the end of "Candidate," you're left wondering why we have yet to hear more of Oswald, especially with all the swill polluting mainstream radio during the last few years. Expect big things to come from this band, and be sure to order your copy of A Failed Attempt to Alter History before they, too are swallowed up by the masses.