Bravestation :: "White Wolves"

Lost in some austere and freezing cold corner of the musical frontier, Bravestation tap the textural angularity of Foals and the wide open arrangements of Local Natives. The aesthetics drive to the center of something unrequited, in the chorus represented as critical metaphor, "you're missing the rain/you're wishing for rain," while not necessarily promising resolution or the hint of hope on the horizon. The choosing of imagery for this desolation is arbitrary and in its indiscriminatness, it is beautiful. The song, all these moving parts and pebbled rhythms, trembles toward an inward collapse before holding together and threatening to explode, all alone in the middle of nowhere.

Faunts :: "Feel.Love.Thinking.Of"

There is no way to discuss new-wave or synth-pop bands without mentioning a whole host of influences ranging from somewhere around New Order and Erasure right up to the Postal Service. This is a problem. I sit here and think of influences that might excite you but really, my library of possible bands is used up quickly and you end up thinking, "Depeche Mode? Does that sound like something I could be into in 2008?" And you think ... "maybe?"

But really comparison doesn't do anyone any sort of justice. Faunts do kind of sound like New Order but frankly, New Order is a much better band with a larger, deeper catalogue of songs. Comparing the two would be like asking a sixth grader to go out to bars and hit on women. It's not that they couldn't physically get to the bar (by bike) and reasonably sneak their way in under the guise of some excuse ("I'm looking for my Dad") but the truth is, they'd be too young to really pull it off. Asking Faunts to be New Order is a little too much. Even saying that Faunts can do some of the same things as New Order is too much. It's too soon. And, they have the whole rest of their lives to go to bars and pick up women. Just work on getting to Algebra on time for the moment.

Listen :: Faunts - "Feel.Love.Thinking.Of"