Myspace Rundown

New sorta feature. Now that I'm on the tweener's paradise, I get random friends requests from a fair number've small bands. Thought a brief rundown might be a nice thing to do; it'll also make me write about music that isn't a particular favorite, as part of my ongoing Really Be Critical campaign.

Joe Pena Greyhound Soul: Not bad. Nice laid-back vibe, weak vocals on some tracks like "Into the Room;" but "World Demo" has a Tom Waitsy kinda appeal. B+, mebbe.

Lono: At first glance, not very interesting. Overwrought Tool-type music without the structural depth of Maynard. It's got some of the same driven testosterone appeal, so it's ok if that metal's your bag in general, but there's no particular draw or reason to hang on to it otherwise. C+.

Fallen View: Pretty bland, but pretty nice. Their little blurby bit by their picture (I'm sure that part of a profile has a name, but I don't know what it is) about sums it up: vocally-driven melodic niceness. C+.

mechanical birds: Loses points before I've even heard anything by doing this odd white-out thing that makes the Myspace URL hard to read. Why do that? It's sugary techno-pop, maybe a little more skilled than I would have expected. B.

There seems to be a common theme here--most of these bands fill a niche very adequately but without much innovation or creativity (always remembering, of course, that these opinions were formed after listening to three tracks a couple of times each). I don't think this is necessarily representative of musicians on myspace--a'tris is my favorite example, they're damned good, and there are all kinds of really stellar people like Regina Spektor and Casey Dienel and Birdmonster. Is it just the law of averages, or are bands looking to befriend random music bloggers uniformly mediocre? Only time will tell, I s'pose.

tags: [Music], [myspace],