Drab Majesty : "Careless"

Out of L.A comes another band that finally gets the importance of elegance when bringing goth back from the dead. "Entrance and Exits kinda holds on the same groove and becomes a drugged blur out of the opening song. There is a Psychic Tv meets the Cure vibe to "Foreign Eye".  The vocals are smooth rather than a low baritone murmur most bands of this sort take on . "Everything is so Sentimental" seems to be set to the same drum program the previous song leaving the synth and guitars to fill out the frame work , thought the hit hat gets triggered into more of a disco beat toward the end of the song. A more new wave pop beat forms on " the Heiress"  like something Dead or Alive or Billy Idol  might have done in the early eights. This project retains a more organic sound than say Gary Numan, though the vocals are slathered in effects in a similar manner.

More ethereal guitar floats in for "Hallow" the guitar riff is cool enough but the song drifts by like a cloud. The vocals allow them selves to set back more into the music to create a little more of a shoe gaze effect.The hazy shoe gaze dream continues on" Unknown to the I" . His vocals lower into a breathier register not quiet a baritone , the first lyric that stood out to me on this album is the line "the cocaine was a merry go round". Which I think is a clever way of describing a drug problem. There is a very drugged glaze to many of the songs so it doesn't surprise me.  At this point the album has gone in more of a Death of Lovers direction as its at the cross roads between goth and shoe gaze.

The closing song "Careless" is less shoe gaze and more like the Cure's trippier moments though it wanders off with an incomplete ending and fades into nothing, like its an idea for a song rather than a free standing fully written song. Overall this album is a little like Cairo Pythian in the fact that it is so unique in its sound you are a little wowed by it, but this album was less surprising than Cairo Pythian as it eventually begins to conform to more of a shoe gaze sound. I do like that fact it steers clear of the post-rock revival rut, so I'll give it an 8.

6