MORNINGBELL
Issue #32
Through the Belly Of the Sea
By Joel Cusumano
Published: June 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
Morningbell hail from that sucking black abyss of music culture, Florida, which is best known for offering local music aficionados an eclectic, homegrown mix of idiotic hardcore/screamo bands, mindless club music, and aging-rocker double bills. So it’s fairly commendable that the group decided to bet on a different horse: sweeping indie rock á la Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. It’s unfortunate that their debut, Through the Belly of the Sea, is indie rock made like many of their Sunshine State contemporaries: too blandly conceived and about five years out of vogue.
The band calls Through the Belly of the Sea the first “Choose Your Own Adventure” album, recalling the once-popular children’s books, and like those books, this album is full of flash, pomp, and magical creatures, and is, ultimately, disposable. Track titles such as “Octopus Walks Across the Coral” and “Utopian Fantasy at the Center of the Earth” sound like greenhorn stabs at weighty concept pieces, but the songs themselves are just lightweight indie pop.
If anything, Morningbell’s biggest problem is that it overshoots. Songs such as opener “The Speed of God” and “Utopian” are splendid keyboard pop, just stuck in the middle of a bunch of other songs that sound, well, kind of the same. Travis Atria’s vocals are pleasant and can skillfully move from lively to airy; better material would serve him well.
Through the Belly of the Sea isn’t the monster it pretends to be, but Morningbell is young and weird enough (check out the squiggly octave pedal solo on “The Desert Sea On the Floor”) to maybe pick the right adventure next time around.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more