Laurel Collective – Feel Good Hits Of A Nuclear Winter

19 August 2008, Allan @ 7:20 pm Laurel Collective Feel Good Hits Of A Nuclear Winter

There isn’t much said about the Laurel Collective, a band from London, England. It’s a 6 piece band with 2 vocalists listed (they list just vocals so it seems odd). They also call themselves a genre trashing band.

Nothing of their band particularly interests me at this point and I just dig right into their album “Feel Good Hits of a Nuclear Winter”. Interesting title, one being that it’s still summertime and two you really have to make good on your “feel good hits” statement. Anyway the album is only 8 tracks which makes it feel like an extended EP….yet I really believe this is intended to be a full release.

Before I get into too many ramblings, the album starts off with International Love Affair a very good power pop song with some very catchy synths in the intro and in the hooks. Mix in the guitar pop, you get an awesome 4 minute pop song that doesn’t seem to die down and progresses at the 2:40 minute to a chaotic war. It’s my favorite off the record but because they are releasing it as a single, you’ll just have to check out their myspace and listen to it.

At least they hit the nail on the head, calling themselves a genre-trashing or genre-less band. The next track Gun Mouth sounds like it’s from a different band. This track uses the variance between the two vocalists during most of the song. If you would’ve told me there was just one vocalist though, I would’ve believed you. The introduction to the song is interesting, I thought this was going to be more of a dance song. It’s a decent track but musically, it doesn’t stand out that much. This one is creative but I get a little annoyed at hearing Gun Mouth screamed 50 times over the course of the song (add that I’ve been really tired the last few days).

Vuitton Blues and Seasick Sailor was probably the next two favorite tracks off this record. Vuitton Blues has the hand claps dispersed throughout the track and instead of the angry-styled vocals on the previous track they stick with being cleaner and it comes off as a better song. Seasick Sailor starts off with a simplistic solo and kicks into overdrive after about 10 seconds in.

These songs at the end of the day aren’t feel good hits, you can just tell by the titles but the Laurel Collective do a great job of risk-taking and mixing in pop with downright chaos and thrashing of all their instruments. I don’t think they do the greatest job transitioning the differences in between each song, and I find myself listening to one section of the album. Also with having two vocalists, I don’t know if their goal was to subtlety mix them so that they sounded like the same person but it doesn’t create enough variance to be as effective as they can be.

Download their cover of Golden Phone which is originally by by Micachu and the Shapes.

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