Headlights – Some Racing Some Stopping Review
I wasn’t much of Headlights fan before. I heard about them scarcely and with a million bands that need coverage things get lost in the shuffle and I was probably angry that I hadn’t found out about them before hand. I was introduced to Headlights with the track Cherry Tulips in January where it was the ultimate dream pop song for me. It remains one of my favorite tracks this year with this song being posted a whole on other blogs. It definitely has me singing along to this song, though in a way I can perfectly relate to contradictoriness of not being able to sleep but when you finally get to it’s totally euphoric. The video is alright though I wasn’t a fan of the hula-ing.
So what did I think about the rest of “Some Racing, Some Stopping”? First off I really enjoyed the title, I interpreted as a literal expression such as The Still’s Lola Stars and Stripes. Secondly, I had really had high expectations Cherry Tulips was just so awesome, the rest of the album would be a disappointment if it didn’t match the quality.
I think it might be bad to admit this but when it comes to pop music there’s generally a formula on the vocal side that seems to hypnotize me time and time again. Generally female vocals with their melodic/choiry voices do the trick. My second most favorite track “On April 2″ use exactly that. I swear I can throw up my hands and say I love Erin Fein. I definitely prefer her on vocals as she seems to command your attention. I enjoy soft vocals occasionally but Fein is just too good of a vocalist to not be singing.
The rest of the album was very mellow and at times I found a difficult time getting through it all and I ended up picking favorites with certain tracks and ultimately leaving the others out of the rotation. I think the points where they are rather soft vocally and instrumentally are their weakest points. Going from two extremes made it difficult because it really wanted me to make me hate the softer songs even more because of the drastic shift.
Another criticism I have is the length of the album with only 10 tracks on the album, it lacks quantity when there is quality present. So when I’m hating on a track such as the title track, it has a much bigger effect on my feeling on the album.
I like the album, I’m not ecstatic about and definitely has some tracks I absolutely love but it’s losing playing time for other pop albums I’ve divulged myself in Some tracks seem to sound the same but they were well placed and I just noticed this going through it now.
Rating: 3.8 out of 5.
Buy it at:CD Universe/Amazon
On April 2 by Headlights
Cherry Tulips by Headlights
Video for Cherry Tulips:
Nice post. Love everything I’ve heard from Headlights so far.
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