Customer Reviews

My Red Scare

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Constellation records has done it again. For good reason I pick up every new release off of GYBE!'s Constellation label, and so bought Red Scare without listening to it. Released around the same time as the new GYBE! release it thus took a back seat in the listening rotation. But over a period of the past couple of months it has steadily grown on me to the point where it is now one of my favorite cds of 00. Much like the rest of Constellation material it takes a little getting used to. These are cleaver (in a way), sombre pop (if you could even call it that, though I've also heard the lounge label applied which is just as valid) songs delivered in the most honest, real voice I've ever heard. Backed by somewhat sparse, loose, sometimes angular instrumentation this release could probably be best described as a lonely, pensive bus ride through the city on a late, rainy monday night.

Unique singer-songwriter with a hauntingly bleak take on the craft; maybe that is why the deformed traditionalist ended up on Constellation records. Recording sad laments to the pace of a snail is no easy feat. The artist is to be commended for attempting this motionless pulse with darkened conviction, apparent through a few of MRS's triumphs, though too often it becomes apparent the gathered weight created is strained to melodically hold water. Instead, an overriding heroin-type aesthetic gives way to unmemorable chord transitioning and severe gravelly, and gravely, vocalitis.