Saint Rich - Beyond the Drone

  by Adrian Janes

published: 19 / 11 / 2013

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Saint Rich are a side-project of New Jersey’s Delicate Steve, formed by the eponymous Steve (Marion) and bandmate Christian Peslak. They reportedly decided to pursue this project during a weekend confined to the house because of a flood, which led to the writing of seven new songs. Such facility should perhaps have given them more pause for thought: the album they have ultimately produced is not as inspired as this anecdote suggests it should be. The title track functions as a brief, slightly ominous introduction, a mix of piano chords, piercing guitar drones and what sounds like garbled police radio messages. It leads into the lumbering rock of ‘Officer’, the timbre of Peslak’s vocals taking on shades of Marc Bolan and Jeff Buckley as he expresses sarcastic defiance. But the most exciting aspect of the song, as throughout the album, is the versatile guitarwork: here, Marion’s sound is aggressive and jagged, while he supplies adept, fluid lines to the largely instrumental and acoustic ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’, something more abstract to the darkness of ‘Black and Brown’, and interesting slide emphases on ‘Dreams’. How much it is due to the speed with which the original material was written is impossible to say, but despite the pair’s musical skill most of the songs on this album offer little in the way of originality or distinctiveness. Thus they seem chiefly to resort to existing musical templates, whether it’s the 70's-style rock of ‘Young Vultures’ or the Mumford and Sons hoedown of ‘Crying from the Home’. At the same time, such a competent approach (albeit with the added distinction of some fine guitar-playing), is perfectly acceptable to many people. You probably wouldn’t turn it off if it came on the radio, but whether much of it would justify the effort of downloading, let alone venturing into a shop, is another matter.

Track Listing:-

1 Beyond the Drone
2 Officer
3 Sorry/Sadly
4 Dreams
5 Young Vultures
6 Crying From the Home
7 Black and Brown
8 You Ain't Worth the Night
9 Don't Bring Me Down
10 Coming Home
11 To the Sun
12 Already Gone
13 Easy for You

Band Links:-

http://saintrich.bandcamp.com/
http://www.saintrich.com/
https://www.facebook.com/SaintRichSounds
https://twitter.com/saintrichsounds

Label Links:-

http://www.mergerecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Merge-Records-88476979019/timeline/
https://twitter.com/mergerecords
https://www.youtube.com/user/mergerecords

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