Evans the Death - Vanilla
Vanilla, Evans the Death's third studio album is hard to get too excited about. The album sounds good - don't get me wrong, it is full of all the right elements: noisey guitar riffs, warps, drums which keep up with changes from noise to funk, and sweet shrieking vocals, and a Dylan Thomas reference for a title, but something isn't in it for me. Everything is just keeping up – nothing is holding it together. Something in me can't commit.
The band do experiment with a lot of ideas: funky brass breakdowns, mournful duets, noisey choruses, but despite the positives of change from their usual indie pop sound the finish isn't there: the album doesn't come together to mean anything. There are moments of redemption – some nice bass in pop-funk ditty Hot Sauce, Katherine's perfect grunge drone of 'Now the daytime TV isn't what is used to be' in Armchair Theatre, and the band can sure write a catchy chorus (see opener, Haunted Wheelchair). These glimmers of what could have been are sweet but short lived: it feels as though the album was written 5 years too soon. Maybe next time?
4/10
