Blivit comes through as a band on “Unhand the World†that is tremendously influenced by the seventies, specifically the arena rock that took over as the dominant musical style for a couple of years. However, much like “Blinded By The Lightâ€, Blivit doesn’t use a guitar but rather a keyboard to make all sorts of nutty songs. At moments, the keyboard is virtually indistinguishable from a guitar line, but just like the obverse of a coin, sometimes Jeremy’s work sounds stilted and does not fit well into the rest of the equation. Jeremy’s vocals on tracks like “Stone Again†look back to acts like Ben Folds, while eir keyboards have the ominous quality of sounding quite like a Nintendo soundtrack at key moments of the track. The intensity of the average Blivit track is quite like that held by a number of punk acts, and in tracks like “Ugly Inside†Jeremy’s vocals interact and mix well with Dave’s bass lines. The synthesizers come through in a major way during the aforementioned “Ugly Insideâ€, in that they virtually mimic guitar work at the level of a Boston or Kansas. The crest of hard-driving and catchy tracks continues with “Rockin the Boatâ€, which incorporates the fuzz of a legion of poor punk rock bands with John Maher to come up with something completely new.
Blivit, even though their premise as a band is something that has not been seen in the piece, is fairly complacent with the fare that is found on “Unhand The Worldâ€. Tracks like “Lobotomy†are a logical extension of the rest of the tracks on the disc, and that actually comes to be a negative thing concerning the disc when one understands that there are no derivations from the general formula created at the onset of the disc. The lyrics on tracks like “Lobotomy†are also suspect, such as “The trouble’s not the pigs with wings, pleasure is the way it stings, when they remove that piece of mindâ€, but perhaps the members of Blivit are trying a little role-playing, writing a song in a style that a person with a lobotomy would write it. Simply put, the tracks on “Unhand the World†are created with the utmost concern for the instrumentation, but fall into the same pitfall each time when it actually comes to stepping outside the box. If the band could try some different approaches for their next disc, they would be one of the most vibrant and exciting bands out.
Top Tracks: Rockin The Boat, Progress
Rating: 5.9/10
Blivit – Unhand the World / 2005 Crimson Five Productions / 15 Tracks / http://www.blivit.net / http://www.canarypromo.com/blivit / Reviewed 25 February 2005