System and Station – A Nation of Actors CD Review
For about three months System and Station has been haunting me. Every time I opened a copy of Under the Radar magazine I would see the ad (from their Latest Flame label) proclaiming their newest album A Nation of Actors as something worth listening to, specifically a critic’s proclamation that “(the album) gets better each time through its 11-song track set, providing that the hooks are a mere introduction.”
Now I’m not one to automatically jump aboard any bandwagon and I’m more likely to approach the Next Big Thing very cautiously but something about this band intrigued me. Perhaps it’s the simplicity of their cover art. Perhaps it’s the cover art itself which seems to convey a certain satirical intelligence. If nothing else they had enough of a visual and literal hook to make me want to investigate further.
Aesthetically this band – or at least this band’s album – has all the markings of musicians of a group of professionals. It’s a marvel in design and packaging, like someone knew what they were doing. In addition to the minimalist cover art, the liner notes and the song-by-song lyrics are energized by some obscure but colourful and compelling paintings by someone named Jamie Miller. Visually A Nation of Actors has you believing you’re in for something special.
Now you may be wondering, why the fixation with all the ancillary parts of the album? Who really cares about the liner notes? This, after all, is a music review. What about the music?
But that’s the thing. After listening to A Nation of Actors four or five times I still don’t get System and Station and I really have no idea what exactly qualifies as their sound.
Sonically they sound unfinished; not the kind of garage band incomplete-by-design unfinished, more a sound that remains unrefined, as if they aren’t really sure what they want to sound like.
Not that there isn’t something to build on. At times you get an understated guitar riff leading to what you think is going to be some melancholy balled but then they break pattern and get into fuzzy distortion and lead vocals that hint at Jane’s Addiction but then wander off into some unknown (and unwanted) virgin territory.
System and Station seem to be a band more in love with the idea of being a band than in adding a unique voice to the music landscape. Their bio reads like any others, describing the ubiquitous stuff all bands seem to go through; telling the world who they’ve rubbed shoulders with (Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) and chronically (band) life on the proverbial (musical) road but, within all this garnish, they still don’t deliver a sound, or at least one that separates themselves from the million other media darling phenoms out there.
Until they produce something musically close to rivaling their professional packaging (a compliment), System and Station will remain nothing more than what I first noticed in that music mag all those months ago; an intriguing image and nothing more.
Lesson learned: Don’t believe everything you read (or hear).
Too Late Too Soon
The Magnetic North
Tags: album