Quickening-Are You Listening?

Quickening | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 3, 2004)
• Original Release Date: March 23, 2004
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Oasis
• ASIN: B0001ZIT2K
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,394,824 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Unless I m wrong and forgetting an obvious candidate, Cleveland hasn t offered a successful or notorious band since the creative explosion of Pere Ubu/The Dead Boys nearly three decades ago. Well, there may have been great local bands, but Ohio is not where I live. Quickening are a four-piece band that maybe aren t fit for world domination either (blame the world, not them), but at least they delivered a respectable shot with their second full-length album Are You Listening? Even though they list a ridiculous diverse batch of bands as influences (ranging from AC/DC to Devo to Hum and Hüsker Dü) they ve obviously already found their own voice, one that luckily doesn t try to merge all these inspirations (Angus Young goes Devo spastic? Imagine it!). What we do get is something that we - for convenience s sake might call emo , punk-pop or good ol e indie , all depending on your preference. Granted, despite the crisp-sounding and rather accessible music, it s not far-fetched that they incorporated the influence of Quicksand (especially the guitar interplay), one of vocalist James Isom s favorites, but they combine it with a knack for pop you d never find in any band Walter Schreifels is a member of. The band excels at the precise/tight musicianship many emo bands have made their trademark of, but whereas many of those units prefer writing dense, opaque songs that are often particularly hard to separate from each other, Quickening enrich their soft/loud-dynamics and muscular guitar parts with a healthy dose of melodicism and catchy vocals. So there s Jawbox, but there s also Jimmy eat World and Weezer. The title track immediately serves as a fine example of that: those breaks and wordy lyrics have emo all over them, yet there s a freshness to the sound that s all too often lacking on their contemporaries efforts and while I m not the world s expert, I d say that they re best at the songs that constantly walk the line between skewed rhythms and outright pop acc --Peters Reviews (Belgium)

Product Description

Soaked in melody and potency; Quickenings first full lenght CD is creating a new genre for metal heads and popsters to coexist.

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