Album opener Shepherd’s Bush Lullaby is quirky and interesting: it’s a capella,
and seems to be Ben’s own voice singing all the different parts layered over
each other. Unfortunately, it’s downhill from then on. The next few tracks,
namely Dream Song and Teardrop Windows, reminded me of Death
Cab. A lot. And not even in a good way. It seems like Ben has formed a blander,
uninteresting version of Death Cab and ripped off their sound. The comparisons
don’t stop there. Mid-album track Lily
is a super-cute love song, but reminds me too much of Death Cab’s acoustic
songs like I Will Follow You Into The
Dark.
Next up is Something’s Rattling (Cowpoke). It has a weird title but I really
like it. The addition of a Mariachi band makes it stand out; it’s different and
new and fun, and it had me doing a little dance in my seat. “Brilliant,” I
thought, “it seems that things are looking up.” Then Duncan, Where Have You Gone? came on, sounding like the illegitimate
musical lovechild of band of Horses and Death Cab. In the worst way ever. It’s
terrible. The following few songs are listenable, but I just can’t get past the
fact that they all sound like Death Cab.
The last song on the album, I’m Building A Fire, is more along the
lines of what I was expecting the album to sound like. Lovely and acoustic,
with just Ben Gibbard and a guitar. It’s such a shame that Ben didn’t make the
other songs on the album sound more like this one: this and Something’s Rattling (Cowpoke) prove
that he can make great music without immediately being associated with Death
Cab. They’re both excellent tracks.
Overall, I’m dissatisfied with Former Lives. It’s disappointing when
artists go off and do their solo thing but just end up sounding like the band
they are most notably associated with. There are too many different styles
creeping in throughout the album, like the obvious country influences in Broken Yolk in Western Sky; everyone is
allowed to experiment musically, but here they just don’t seem to fit and the
album feels less coherent. That, and pretty much every song sounds, in some
way, like a Death Cab song. At least he’s moved on from The Postal Service, and
there are no similarities with them as far as I am aware.
Former
Lives in general is familiar and nice, but it doesn’t
sound like anything I haven’t heard before. Even the album cover is reminiscent
of Death Cab’s Narrow Stairs. I
appreciate that Ben wanted to go off and do his own thing, and make this more
of a personal pursuit, but in all honesty the collection sounds like
cast-offs from a Death cab album. A
distinctly average album with a couple of gems hidden in there.
Former Lives by Benjamin Gibbard is out on the 12th of November
through City Slang.
SH
No comments:
Post a Comment