Meeting Places - Find Yourself Along The Way

by Jon Rogers

published: 5 / 12 / 2003

Meeting Places - Find Yourself Along The Way

Label: Words On Music
Format: CD

Unnecessary and unoriginal shoegazing pop on debut album from the Meeting Places, a Los Angeles quartet with a strong Slowdive influence

Review

This Los Angeles quartet were formed in September 2001 but they're so drenched in the ethos of the dream pop/shoegazing movement that they could have been around since the early 1990's. As such, they've eschewed any current trends and pilfered wholesale from the likes of Ride, Chapterhouse and particularly Slowdive. 'Find Yourself Along the Way' harks back to the days of cliched glacial soundscapes constructed from layers and layers of guitars, delicate melodies and virtually indecipherable lyrics. And all from a bunch of middle-class art schoolers in love with some idealised bohemian life of poverty they've read about in some biography or history book, before doing an about face worthy of Prince Hal in Shakespeare's 'Henry IV Part I' and settling down in the home counties to a steady banking job. The Meeting Places have taken those early dabblings and done absolutely nothing with them whatsoever. Listening to their debut album is like taking a trip back in time. And totally unrewarding. A pointless, needless act. Nothing new is added whatsoever. To be frank the track 'Now I Know You Could Never Be The One' is so similar to the early EPs of Slowdive that they really should be contacting their lawyers. Only the six-minute 'Take to the Sun' has any redeeming features. And those are a little too few and far between. A totally pointless and unnecessary album.

Track Listing:-

1 Freeze Our Stares
2 On Our Own
3 See Through You
4 Now I Know You Could Never Be The One
5 Same Lies As Yesterday
6 Blur The Lines
7 Wide Awake
8 Where You Go
9 Take To The Sun
10 Turned Over