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| As a person who grew up listening to various genres of music that were heavily segregated from each other (lounge, folk, classical, reggae, plus rock of every kind � soft and hard, heavy-metal, head-banger, thrash-metal, psychedelic, garage, punk, grunge, art, glam, etc.) - I�m not quite sure what to make of this 5-song EP. It flip-flops around so much, even within each composition, trying to blend water with oil, that it fails to yield much of anything with substance. Nevertheless, just as one might pick out the sweet cherries from an otherwise bland fruit salad and put them aside to savour for the last, there are a number of tasty morsels of musicality that can be extracted from this EP. I concur that there is definitely a Clash influence, if only in Dave Klym�s non-musical lead vocals on the opening �these days�. Dave is much more talented as a guitarist, although his singing does improve after this first song. The teasing promise of the shrieking, rock-anthem guitar licks opening �show me a sign� is strangely abandoned for laid-back, loping verse lines sandwiched between an overly-noisy chorus that leads to a psych-surf guitar break before crashing back into the extended chant of �I�ve been losing faith/show me a sign� � interesting but weird. I hear traces of the Northern Pikes, and The Watchmen as well, especially in the Morse code effect rendered on bass guitar (played by Meck Myers) on �deep end�. The guys also manage to fit in a Seattle grunge meets garage sound while claiming, �we�re all the same� � nah, some of us are more messed up than others, i.e. beyond the possibility of redemption. �You Took My Ball Away� is the best track in that it stays true to form as a pop-rocker without bleeding too far into other musical territories. �Everything You Are� is fairly likeable in its slowed-down trance pace, and the interest factor is upped with a dramatic injection of a bluesy-rock guitar solo; that melding worked out fine. When I heard these ex-Albertans (now based in Prescott, Ontario) live at the Y108-sponsored �Monkey Jam� (for monkeybiz.ca) in Hamilton, I heard an extremely energetic, dynamic drummer in Ernie Basiliadis, who was charging up the band to its maximum capacity. He seemed pretty excited and into the groove then, as did Dave and Meck, but the magnetic power emanating from them then is just not present here. In essence, they really ought to make up their minds whether they want to be on the hard or soft side of rock music, as they seem perfectly capable of playing both but don�t make enough of a distinction between the two. |
| 5 - THE POPULARS (EP Review by Diane Wells) |
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