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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very solid debut album of Seattle indie-rockers, January 9, 2008
This review is from: With Me (Audio CD)
Let me state upfront that I knew very little, ok nothing, about Siberian until I heard them on internet-only indie-rock station WOXY, "The Future of Rock and Roll", and as soon as I heard them, I knew I had to check out more of this band. Apparently, the band has been together since 2004, and after an initial EP, their debut album was released in Fall, 2007.
"With Me" (11 tracks, 43 min.) starts off with the best song on the album, a brilliant "Belgian Beer and Catholic Girls" (and it has nothing to do with the fact that I'm from Belgium originally...): a sound reminiscent of Editors, a sniff of Interpol, even early Radiohead (and no, not Queens of the Stone Ages...). After that follows an equally appealing "Paper Birds", the best known song of the band and the only song on here which also appeared on the earlier EP. Other highlights for me include "Futuristic Kids", one of the many uptempo songs on the album, with great interplay between the 2 electric guitars, and "Wolf and Crane". There are 2 slower, reflective songs towards the end of the album, "Georg Bendemann" and the beautiful closer "Islands Forever".
In all, "With Me" is a terrific album, and I can only hope that Siberian will take this on the road outside the Northwest of the country, where they play regularly. Can't wait to see how these guys sound live. Highly recommended!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
All time top 10 albums I own..., March 6, 2010
This review is from: With Me (Audio CD)
One of the best albums I've ever heard. I'd put them slightly below Radiohead. Fantastic, and totally brilliant. As soon as I found this CD, as I purchased it in early 2009, I was devistated to find out they had just broken up. What a shame. Whatever the singer does in future, I will follow.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
+1/2 -- Accomplished, if indistinct, Britpop-inspired indie-rock, March 25, 2008
This review is from: With Me (Audio CD)
This Seattle quartet's first full length CD follows in the guitar-indie-rock vein of their 2007 debut EP, "Hey Celestial!" Finn Parnell sings in a loping style that's lackadaisical in tempo but rich in emotion, with languid slides into sing-song falsetto that will remind you of Radiohead's Thom Yorke. The vocal tone is key, because the lyrics are poetically opaque ("I'll swim in your hair, it's like a river, the Colorado running through you") and run over, under and around the beat, ala Morrissey. The guitars create a wall of electric sound that's ably punctuated by Aaron Benson's drumming, and though the arrangements are concise (mostly clocking in around 4-minutes), there's a sense of the prog-rock changes and the longer, hypnotic forms of post-punk bands like The Feelies. It's the jazz-inflected moments (plus the short lapse to near-acoustic on "Georg Bendemann") that distinguish Siberian from the dozens of similar Britpop (or Britpop-inspired) indie-rock bands. The band is accomplished, but the spectrum within which they play is so narrow as to make their CD difficult to distinguish from similar works by Radiohead, Keane, Editors, Doves, Muse, Minus the Bear, Slender Means, and others. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]
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