The Hundred In The Hands: The Hundred In The Hands
Tobias FischerSometimes I picture each entry in this generation of rock bands getting one shot at a giant dartboard sectioned into names of successful bands, and they get between 2 and 4 darts to hit the band names that will make up their sound. In this New York girl/boy duo’s case, fate guided their missiles to Cardigans and Duran Duran.
Eleanore Everdell’s (weirdly spelled first name on an echo-boomer! Drink!) voice makes the same sounds you’ve heard out of every other pop-rock chick since Lisa Loeb, that kittenish, unambitious, half-breathy tone that makes you say “maybe it’s Feist, or Sia, or maybe the Submarines… is [whoever] still making albums?” when you hear it, and speaking of the Cardigans, these two use the funk wacka-wacka guitar from “Lovefool” a lot, including on opener “Young Aren’t Young,” which is kind of un-smart, being that when you spend the first 3 minutes of your album sounding exactly like the Cardigans, 90% of self-respecting reviewers are going to pretend they listened to the rest of the songs and proceed to write ten overstuffed sentences that all mean “Neener, these knobs sure rip off the Cardigans.” As with any buzz band, they get all their hipster business done in one useful tune (“Gold Blood,” a slug of sloppy-loud hiphop drumming and vampire-queen posturing).
For the record, the Duran Duran sounds to which I referred earlier are in the form of fake-jazz guitar-wankage (“Lovesick Once Again” and elsewhere – would it really matter if I listed a few titles you’re only going to hear once at TGI Fridays anyway?).
By Eric Saeger
Homepage: The Hundred In The Hands
Homepage: Warp Records
Related articles
Man-machine-made music: Breathtaking demonstrations of ...
2008-11-11
An ongoing interest in contemporary ...
2008-10-29