Say hello to my kids

School has been shitty and taking up the majority of my time, along with other things, so I haven't had any time to write anything. That list of "Overlooked Albums" obviously hasn't been completed, but I have a 4-day weekend ahead of me so I'll likely have to time to finish and post that.

I'm going to begin a little "feature"-type blogging... a brief mention about some lesser-known or maybe just very recently-relevant band or album which will be every week or so. Since I've very, very bad at trying to write and post full album reviews regularly, maybe this will work out better.

But anyway...

Though I haven't gotten a chance to listen to it too many times, I'm really enjoying the self-titled EP by the post-rock band, Say hello my kids. I've probably mentioned at one point that I'm very fond of post-rock. It's perhaps my most favourite genre, but like almost all genres, there's a great deal of crap to sift through before you find the goods. Post-rock has the unfortunate reputation of being known particularly dull, and while I would agree to a certain extent (I really don't find too much variety in EitS, the Album Leaf, etc), there really are some excellent bands out there. I typically try to reach out into the more exciting end of post-rock spectrum and only post the real gold here.

That being said, I think Say hello to my kids meets some of the higher expectations of post-rock. Their debut EP doesn't form around any one stable sound, which I like, because it gives them various areas in which to branch off to. They use vocals in a lot their music in an "abnormal" manner for post-rock; there's more focus on lyrics than is typically found. Interestingly enough, the songs with vocals also include the most interesting instrumentation and end up grabbing the most attention. Say hello to my kids resemble a sort of... toned-down version of iLiKETRAiNS that uses the ambient elements of This Will Destory You's music. And somewhere throughout that we hear some Mono-esque dark droning guitar notes and also the shy piano typical of The Tumbled Sea. (ALL those bands really need to be name-dropped around here more often!). It skips around a bit, but I highly suggest listening to the entire EP (which you can download from the band's last.fm). So it's kind of a downer to listen to, but in that good "I want to spend all these dreary winter days alone in my house eating dried fruit, reading out-of-print books, and reminiscing about the ones I miss, being content, but not happy" way. It's not wintertime, you say? Well, I live in Washington and it's always winter here... (rain rain rain rain rain rain)

Rating: 8.1/10

[last.fm]
[myspace]
[website]

Posted by Anna at May 27, 2010 10:07 PM