SILENT KIDS
Tomorrow Waits (Cur On A Glider)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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This is a nice little confectionery pop album, but I was immediately alarmed by the way they borrowed music rather than absorbed influences. The first song begins with a single guitar that sounds for all the world like the intro to Springsteen's "Fire" before the band comes in and the electric guitar plays a single-note melody that, had it not swerved on the 7th note of the run, would have been the hook from Loverboy's "Working For The Weekend." They throw a lot of different sounds around through the rest of "Drift Into Summer," which is, after all, only track one, but it's hard not to wonder if they did were quoting those songs for some unfathomable reason or if they just didn't realize what it sounded like.

It's a real shame that track opened the album. Had "The Bering Sea" been the first song, they'd be getting more press. Most critics aren't as weird as I am about sticking to a code of listening to everything once, and they turn it off as soon as it displeases them. Which means they missed some pretty cool, if not particularly revolutionary, pop music with jangly acoustic guitars, plaintive slide guitars, odd back-of-the-mix synths, general murkiness and an overall feeling that things in the Silent Kids' world are just a little bit fucked up and out of place. With the proper mixture of headphones, blacklight and volume you feel like Gumby after carelessly skating into a Vonnegut book.

The deeper into the album you go, the more you begin to hear Silent Kids own sound and the more you appreciate it. A song like "Miami" is amazing because it's constructed of solid power pop using psychedelic tools, resulting in something that makes you want to dance the night away. Just not on the floor. Silent kids. Remember the name. Good band, good album, skip track one until you've heard the rest. Mmm... Maybe they really were just quoting those songs. Nobody coulda done that accidentally.

© 2003 - DJ Johnson