Another CD I picked up in recent months.
A trap for young album purchasers is accidently buying a ‘for the fans only’ album like this one.
This is a pastiche of the 8-track demo that got DCFC ‘noticed’, plus ten other early recordings from the infant act. As you’d expect, it is a bit of a hit and miss affair with no end of experimentation, loads of tentative steps and half-formed ideas, plus some misfires.
I don’t want to sound too negative, however, as the A&R folk were right to get excited about the promise here, and there are loads of hints of how competent this guys would get (and in a pretty short period of time too).
The upsides of the CD are the diversity of ideas, and the ease with which Ben Gibbard appears to produce well-penned tracks built around rhythms that start to mesmirise. I am glad he got over the dated tape-looping and the more bratty power-punk efforts.
I also love that he messed up the lyrics of a Smiths classic, thus pissing of a posse of pompus prats who take some sort of fundamentalist view of the sanctity of the:
