VAST – Me And You Review
For the past decade, it’s been interesting to see the evolution of a band created from one man and his emotions and experiences. This evolution has come at the cost of the happiness of one Jon Crosby, the man behind the moniker “VAST”. In that time the music has taken on a tone of self-hate and self-destruction, possibly due to the difficulties of his personal life, or with regards to gaining the rights of his past musical works. Whatever the reason may be, since the release of his album “Turquoise & Crimson”, the music has been gradually losing the electronic/industrial edge that defined VAST. His latest release “Me And You” does rekindle some aspects of the sound but the majority is acoustically driven, melancholically deep, and stylistically singular.
Me And You as mentioned utilizes a more acoustic sound as seen in “April” (a previous release). This album does have its fair share of electric guitars but the improvement over April is best felt through the overall atmosphere and the noticeably keener attention to detail in production. The vocal work has vastly improved and Crosby does an excellent job in not only singing the emotion but establishing that connection to make you feel that emotion as well. The downside to this is that emotion is most often one of very few. The despair demonstrated in these tracks while passionate in their own right, feel very restrictive as the band has always had good range of emotion.
While VAST has changed dramatically over the years this different sound doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad one. Acoustically, Crosby has an excellent voice and the music feels layered enough to have you keep coming back. Unfortunately, the album feels unnecessary. All these songs have already been released under the solo venture “Generica” in a much more complete fashion. Standout tracks like “You Should Have Known I’d Leave”, “Hotel Song”, and “It’s Not You (It’s Me)” don’t carry the album enough to warrant dedication. Instead I would recommend you go through and peruse the Generica volume releases, you may find more of what you like and for a much better price.
MP3:
VAST – You Should Have Known Id Leave
Buy at:
More info:
Realvast.com / Myspace / Generica
