The New England Roses make an album in “Face Time With Son” that does not have the polish of a more-major type of album. The vocals present on a track like “Dancing Nancies” sounds more similar to something out of The Sissies’ vein of thing more than the buffed sound of PJ Harvey. Interestingly enough “Blood Blood Blood” seems to use the lightest hint of the Civil War song “My Eyes Have Seen The Glory”, but just as rapidly moves into something new as the track continues. The layered vocals in “The Good Wife” really make the track memorable, staggering the lyrics just enough to make a very disjointed sound that will stay in individuals minds well after the seventy-second track ends.
Perhaps the strongest effort by New England Roses occur during “Kids In The City”, a scaled-down and Spartan track that relies heavily on the double harmonies present. These double harmonies, as off-key and anti-euphonic as can be, still are constructed in such a way to make this track assume the role of the most unlikely dance track ever. This nod towards dance is full expounded upon during the sequenced beat and claps of “Candy (version)”, a track that has traditional “goth” synthesizers adding an eighties feel to the track. “Confidence” is perhaps the most challenging track on “Face Time With Son”, owing much of this difficulty to the spoken version of the vocals. Hiding behind these vocals are instruments that rapidly increase in tempo and sound, providing listeners with something that resembles a segment of film more than a few individuals stuck behind a microphone.
“Faith” perhaps has to be the most inspired track on “Face Time With Son”; while the song was covered to greater fame by Limp Bizkit a few years back, the strung-out, mopey vocals and overly-distorted guitars unite to make yet another scene in the “movie” that is “Face Time With Son”. However odd and disjointed the tracks may seem in regards to one another , there seems to be a subtle thread running through the entirety of the disc, which winds down with “Revolution”, a track that just feels perfect for the end credits to the movie that the Roses have starred in through the disc’s thirty-three minutes. While the last two tracks on the disc are covers, these are not the cookie-cutter re-vamps of older tracks that tend to get the most publicity, but all-out complete assimilation of the tracks into something uniquely theirs.
Top Tracks: Revolution, Kids In The City
Rating: 7.3/10
New England Roses – Face Time With Son / 2005 Doggpony / 12 Tracks / http://www.dnp006.com / Reviewed 14 September 2005