Archive for the ‘Artful Vandelays’ Category
Artful Vandelays – Four Ring Circus EP
A lot of our writers while sharing some of the music they enjoy weekly or biweekly also double (or triple with day jobs) as musicians. While I’d like to say that I can play any instrument to give myself more credibility, it’s at least better to be writing alongside some really talented people. Jonathan Pinkus emailed last week regarding a show he and his band, the Artful Vandelays were playing at the Velvet Underground and gave me a copy of their Four Ring Circus EP. I think my first reaction was that I’m not sure I want to review another writer’s work. What if I don’t like his or her stuff? The second was, you do know I take a long time to review a record right? It’d be nice to be able to review it before the show.
While I can’t provide any more publicity for their CD release show, I’d like to mention that the Artful Vandelays surprised me with their two tracks on their myspace, Sign Language and Pyramid Scheme. Sign Language begins with light introductory guitaring and Anton’s (? I hate calling people by just the first name) strong vocals. Anton’s vocals are probably one of the band’s biggest strengths as Anton could probably be singing as a singer/song writer and people would still be praising his voice (I’ll say its stronger then Dallas Green’s vocals since they are fans of Alexisonfire). The great thing about the Artful Vandelays is that with a singer like Anton they have a special dynamic with a strong vocalist singing ahead of a progressive/art punk guitar work from Pinkus.
Where the band ultimately stands out is the correct balance to these strengths. While I’m sure Anton’s vocals can steal a show, they feed off each other with some scratchy riffs or aggressive all out play suggesting that the band itself doesn’t need a frontman and can just jam for hours and people would love it.
I really love the basslines on Sign Language. I had no better of introducing that as there is a lot of rhythm in sign language that make that track, nothing short of brilliant. The basslines on Pyramid Scheme is a little more subtle but there is a lot more powerful guitaring and rhythm work on the drummer’s part. So I was pretty excited to hear the rest of their work.
There are some weaknesses on their EP, Phone Lines relies too much on the guitar lines and not enough on Anton’s vocals and rhythm that makes the first two tracks a success. This song definitely shows this band as talented but it doesn’t work on some levels and would definitely need an improvement. They do have some cool experimenting 3 minutes into the track that uses what I was looking for but it feels like a new song altogether (think about putting this section as a new track?). Cleptomaniac is a great way to round off the EP as it feels like it’s going to bust out into a metal anthem. They use a lot of asymmetric drum lines that work surprisingly well.
The Artful Vandelays experiment quite a bit but they are best when they act as a band, the sum of their parts is greater then the parts themselves (they prove this all over the EP) even if each individual is quite talented. When I think about it, I really believe if this was a random band that e-mailed me a copy, I’d check it out anyway so it really doesn’t matter whether or not a writer is currently helping out.
Rating: 4.3 out of 5
They need to be able to show off their talents on a full length and while I believe they are more then capable, sometimes that isn’t easy.
Sign Language by Artful Vandelays
Pyramid Scheme by Artful Vandelays
