Posted on: November 20, 2010 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

“Dear Scene, I Wish I Were Deaf” has a nice mix of rock and emo; the end result with this is a sound that mixes Death Cab For Cutie with Weezer. The sound is mature and without some of the experimentation that mark the legion of emo acts coming from places as diverse as New Jersey and Minneapolis. There are sections of tracks like “My Life Is Trouble” that seem to draw heavily from the indie-rock of bands like The Smiths and The Cure; a minor amount of dance is infused into the track to give the track that simultaneously pulls at the earlier acts mentioned and more-current acts like Fischerspooner. “Why Am I Always Right?” is a modern rock masterpiece; “I Just Want To Be Buried In Your Backyard” moves into a pensive, Duran Duran meets Bright Eyes and Brand New-type of sound.

What is noticeable throughout all of this album is the fact that Nightmare of You comes out with always radio-friendly and toe-tappingly solid compositions. Brandon’s vocals on the aforementioned “I Just Want To Be Buried” are the perfect mix of intensity and smoothness; in a sense, they do double duty as both instrument and conveyor of lyrics. “Ode to Serotonin” is a late-disc track that does not fail to excite listeners; the inclusion of horns during the track really gives the song a ska-like tempo that makes the slower tempo enjoyed by “Marry Me” even more poignant and hard-hitting. “Marry Me” shifts Nightmare of You’s sound yet again, this time to include an alt-country type of a twang that is married near-perfectly to Brandon’s Conor-like vocals on the track. The forty minutes that Nightmare of You’s disc runs does not feel like two-thirds of an hour; the different stylings of the band are so different from one another that individuals will feel as if they have been to an all-day festival by the time the disc spins to a close. The penultimate track “The Studded Cinctures” just has a perfect type of sound to it; one can just imagine it as the ending of a movie playing over the final montage.

Nightmare of You come out with this album, their first and the style of music that they create goes far beyond the styles that the individual members pushed while they were with acts which include Gorilla Biscuits, CIV and The Movielife. However, Nightmare of You has only one thing in common with the listing of bands; they are as vital to this emotive rock as Gorilla Biscuits and CIV were to hardcore and The Movielife was to current emo.

Top Tracks: Heaven Runs on Oil, My Name Is Trouble

Rating: 6.1/10

Nightmare of You – S/T / 2005 The Bevonshire Label / 11 Tracks / http://www.nightmareofyou.com / http://www.eastwest.com / Reviewed 22 November 2005

[JMcQ]

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