The Working Title -- About-Face
The Working Title
About-Face
Cause For Alarm/Universal; 2006
Rating: 5.4
I’ve been listening to local bands comprised of great friends for that past 6 or so years, mostly because I love live music and I like supporting my friends in their artistic and creative endeavors. Hence, my ears have been subjected to a wide variety of tones, styles, and interpretations of what music is supposed to sound like – sometimes it’s been great, sometimes good, and sometimes I’ve asked the door for my money back. I guess that’s what happens when you pay $6.00 at the entrance to a community center to see and hear 4 to 6 bands play. And yes, that does mean that only the headliners ever get paid and I know that because I’ve been in one of those 4 to 6 band shows and haven’t gotten any monetary return for my musical investment.
Subsequently, I have an idea of what it’s like to work, toil, and rehearse for hours with your friends in hopes of getting your sound right, nailing that chord progression, making sure that the vocal tone matches where the guitar player’s melody is traveling, and hoping against hope that you don’t suck at the show you’re prepping to play. Moreover, I’ve been around a couple of great local bands that practice constantly, tour whenever they get a few nights off from their day jobs, have solid fan bases, and never ever stop pursuing their dreams. And I’ve also personally known a couple of local bands that have carried out all the aforementioned aspects of starting a solid band, yet have still broken apart for various reasons. It’s always quite the sad state of affairs when this happens because everyone involved is so emotionally connected to all that’s going on with each member and as a collective. “Everybody hurts,” Stipe claimed.
So, when I start reading about the back-story concerning the South Carolinian boys that make up The Working Title, I get filled with both excitement and trepidation, because I fully realize what can happen between long-term friends who’ve entered into a long-term commitment to make music together. And with this band, the results are pleasantly surprising. It doesn’t take much of a trained ear to realize that the four men have spent many an hour in their practice space crafting these energetic and passionate songs. They’ve been together since 2001, recorded and released their first album independently, completed a small-scale EP with Kevin Law of Universal Records that garnered them some solid national attention in magazines like Alternative Press, and have toured consistently to build a solid collection of fans before entering the studio to create their major-label debut in About-Face. The road that leads to where these guys have arrived is littered with the broken bodies, guitar strings, drumheads, and dreams of so many other bands.
However, my overall impression of About-Face is that it’s polished. Yes, I said it – polished. I do understand that polished doesn’t rank very highly in many people’s lexicon of great words that could be used to describe an album full of someone’s artistic soul. But when I listen through the fourteen songs on this album, I’m struck with an overwhelming sensation that there should be more here, but there’s simply not. The strange thing is that nearly all of the normally-required components are present – solid (if not mature-for-its-age) songwriting, cohesive rhythm section, talented collection of producers (Law, Brad Wood of Smashing Pumpkins and mewithoutYou fame, and Counting Crows guitarist David Bryson), and the sense that singer/songwriter Joel Hamilton really means what he’s singing about.
Nevertheless, it feels like something is just missing here – maybe it’s a hit single (because there really isn’t one) or original guitar work. Ah. Yes. That’s it – the mediocre guitar. Now, look here folks – I’m not intentionally picking on Adam Pavao’s work on this record. It’s just that he’s spent way too much time mining the guitar technique of both The Edge and whatever emo-ish riff has been popular for the past year or so. The echo and delay used on this album begs to be extended for another half-second or so, in hopes of creating a larger soundscape in which the melody lines can clearly ring, but sadly, it all remains in rather predictable territory. One would hope that these guys would have sought out something to give them any kind of advantage in a music world sodden with emotive, mid-tempo, pseudo-ballads, but they didn’t, and the record suffers as a whole.
My major criticism of About-Face is that it is much too clean and antiseptic. I’ve seen The Working Title twice before and this band's live sound is nowhere near as repetitive and monotonous as this album projects. I kept going over the tracks hoping to hear something different than I’d heard in a previous listen-through, but alas, those efforts proved fruitless. It’s always hard to burden a new act with phrases like, “They have potential,” since they so often fail to live up to such predictions, but that’s what I feel like has happened here. Some producer (maybe just one, instead of three) needs to get a good hold of these guys and push their direction a bit. It can still happen and it will quite necessary for these guys.
About-Face
Cause For Alarm/Universal; 2006
Rating: 5.4
I’ve been listening to local bands comprised of great friends for that past 6 or so years, mostly because I love live music and I like supporting my friends in their artistic and creative endeavors. Hence, my ears have been subjected to a wide variety of tones, styles, and interpretations of what music is supposed to sound like – sometimes it’s been great, sometimes good, and sometimes I’ve asked the door for my money back. I guess that’s what happens when you pay $6.00 at the entrance to a community center to see and hear 4 to 6 bands play. And yes, that does mean that only the headliners ever get paid and I know that because I’ve been in one of those 4 to 6 band shows and haven’t gotten any monetary return for my musical investment.
Subsequently, I have an idea of what it’s like to work, toil, and rehearse for hours with your friends in hopes of getting your sound right, nailing that chord progression, making sure that the vocal tone matches where the guitar player’s melody is traveling, and hoping against hope that you don’t suck at the show you’re prepping to play. Moreover, I’ve been around a couple of great local bands that practice constantly, tour whenever they get a few nights off from their day jobs, have solid fan bases, and never ever stop pursuing their dreams. And I’ve also personally known a couple of local bands that have carried out all the aforementioned aspects of starting a solid band, yet have still broken apart for various reasons. It’s always quite the sad state of affairs when this happens because everyone involved is so emotionally connected to all that’s going on with each member and as a collective. “Everybody hurts,” Stipe claimed.
So, when I start reading about the back-story concerning the South Carolinian boys that make up The Working Title, I get filled with both excitement and trepidation, because I fully realize what can happen between long-term friends who’ve entered into a long-term commitment to make music together. And with this band, the results are pleasantly surprising. It doesn’t take much of a trained ear to realize that the four men have spent many an hour in their practice space crafting these energetic and passionate songs. They’ve been together since 2001, recorded and released their first album independently, completed a small-scale EP with Kevin Law of Universal Records that garnered them some solid national attention in magazines like Alternative Press, and have toured consistently to build a solid collection of fans before entering the studio to create their major-label debut in About-Face. The road that leads to where these guys have arrived is littered with the broken bodies, guitar strings, drumheads, and dreams of so many other bands.
However, my overall impression of About-Face is that it’s polished. Yes, I said it – polished. I do understand that polished doesn’t rank very highly in many people’s lexicon of great words that could be used to describe an album full of someone’s artistic soul. But when I listen through the fourteen songs on this album, I’m struck with an overwhelming sensation that there should be more here, but there’s simply not. The strange thing is that nearly all of the normally-required components are present – solid (if not mature-for-its-age) songwriting, cohesive rhythm section, talented collection of producers (Law, Brad Wood of Smashing Pumpkins and mewithoutYou fame, and Counting Crows guitarist David Bryson), and the sense that singer/songwriter Joel Hamilton really means what he’s singing about.
Nevertheless, it feels like something is just missing here – maybe it’s a hit single (because there really isn’t one) or original guitar work. Ah. Yes. That’s it – the mediocre guitar. Now, look here folks – I’m not intentionally picking on Adam Pavao’s work on this record. It’s just that he’s spent way too much time mining the guitar technique of both The Edge and whatever emo-ish riff has been popular for the past year or so. The echo and delay used on this album begs to be extended for another half-second or so, in hopes of creating a larger soundscape in which the melody lines can clearly ring, but sadly, it all remains in rather predictable territory. One would hope that these guys would have sought out something to give them any kind of advantage in a music world sodden with emotive, mid-tempo, pseudo-ballads, but they didn’t, and the record suffers as a whole.
My major criticism of About-Face is that it is much too clean and antiseptic. I’ve seen The Working Title twice before and this band's live sound is nowhere near as repetitive and monotonous as this album projects. I kept going over the tracks hoping to hear something different than I’d heard in a previous listen-through, but alas, those efforts proved fruitless. It’s always hard to burden a new act with phrases like, “They have potential,” since they so often fail to live up to such predictions, but that’s what I feel like has happened here. Some producer (maybe just one, instead of three) needs to get a good hold of these guys and push their direction a bit. It can still happen and it will quite necessary for these guys.
posted by APN at 9:30 PM
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