Red Bedroom

The Fever, Fever | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 18, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Kemado
• ASIN: B0001XARRM
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,495 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice...Pretty Varied, June 26, 2004

By 

LoudSoft (Earth!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Bedroom (Audio CD)

The Fever's a pretty decent band, they always remind me of '80s rock, but that's just me. I like this CD because the song types vary. "Dream Machine" is sort of slow and creepy, "Scorpio" is like a slighty techno song, and "Gray Ghost" sounds nearly ska in a few parts. It's a very nice mix of different styles of songs. It's certainly worth buying.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Can't sleep in the "Bedroom", September 4, 2004

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Bedroom (Audio CD)

When a band has oddly-monikered members like "J" and "Achilles," you know it must be worth looking at. New York-based The Fever burst onto the scene with the delicious trash'n'glam rock EP "Pink on Pink." Now the weirdly-named band members follow up with an solid debut LP, "Red Bedroom," full of the sort of music you'd hear in a robot-themed club. It's plenty of fun, if not much more.

It opens with a bizarre hybrid of percussion, bass and organ in the catchy "Cold Blooded," followed by the heavy organ of "Gray Ghost" and the stomping percussion of "Slow Club." But the music gets perky and catchy, making you want to dance when Fever breaks into the infectious "Ladyfingers" and "Labor of Love."

Some of the songs are definitely lacking -- "Hexxed" sounds completely aimless, like the band was just jamming during a creative lull. They get back their spark in robotic dance numbers like "Scorpio," a simple track that keeps repeating "S-C-O-R-P-I-O/scorpio, scorpio/... my sign is rising!". But the Fever gets surprisingly poignant in anthemic final track, the nostalgic "Diamond Days."

The Fever tend to dip back into 80s-flavored music, with lots of influence from Devo and Grandmaster -- a mix of the catchy and the chilly. And while "Pink on Pink" was fun, "Red Bedroom" shows that they've polished their sound a little. The sleazy-computer-club sound is still there, it's just more refined than in their EP.

The music is a fun, catchy mash of guitar, bass, Achilles' spasmic drums, and J's rippling organ work, transforming it from merely toe-tapping to insanely catchy. And the quality of Geremy Jasper's vocals is hard to tell in tracks like "Scorpio," where he sounds like a drunken android, but in "Ladyfingers" he lets rip with all his overwrought howling might.

At times he' s totally drowned out by the music, but maybe that's not a bad thing. The songwriting is very vivid and captivating, but it rarely makes a lot of sense. They seem almost like a hallucination, with smoke pouring out of cold lips, tigers slipping through zebra stripes, vampires, and gray ghosts: "You paint yrself in a corner/gold threaded white lies/needles in my eyes..." and "your heavy head'll break your neck/rest it next to me/dream machine/the smoke rings circle your eyes..."

Wild wails, nightmarish songwriting and frenetic grooves make up the flashy android club sound of "Red Bedroom." Fun dance music, but the sort of thing that has to grow on you.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great job for their first full length, May 22, 2004

By 

Kevin "Kevdog" (Lexington Park, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Bedroom (Audio CD)

Now I'll admit that this cd was not as great as I thought it would be. 4 stars because this cd is quite good, but not over-the-top good. The Fever's Pink on Pink E.P. was 15 minutes of pure, spastic genius, so I bought this cd with very very high expectations. However, they seem to tone down on the frenetic energy that you feel on Pink on Pink. Ladyfingers is on Red Bedroom, but it's a different, less intense version.

But enough negativity. This actually is a great cd. They do a great job mixing new wave pop rock and caustic indie/punk. It's unique all the way through. It's like if you took Devo, locked them in a room with 15 hungry badgers, and said "Write some songs for us." Crazy, squawking-to-serenading vocals, hypnotic keyboards, fast, frantic, punky guitar work, robot voices....Yep, that's Red Bedroom. Enjoy!