Desert City Soundtrack - Perfect Addiction

  by Benjamin Howarth

published: 18 / 9 / 2005

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Review

Like their label-mates Settlefish earlier this year, Desert City Soundtrack has surpassed expectations in quite a spectacular fashion. Always a competent piano tinged indie rock band, whose debut album 'Funeral Car' impressed some sound judges when it was released in 2004, they now have their own sound, and it is gloomy but addictive. We were given a preview track on a recent label sampler, but that offering 'Batteries' is far from the best song here. Most of the songs on this album are piano led, with the guitars (which always gave away the band’s hardcore roots) pushed slightly into the background. In the place of shouty indie rock, there are great songs, with the same sort of dread that Radiohead evoked on ''The Bends'. The crucial point to make is that Desert City Soundtrack have emerged as songwriters, and that is what brings people back to music time and time again. Backing the melodies up are impressive arrangements, often jerky but always unified, where no instrument seems to be fighting its own corner. The drumming is exceptional, the piano a nice change from the typical indie rock fare. Another strength of the album is that, with 12 tracks lasting only 37 minutes, it doesn’t outstay its welcome. An album to put on repeat, and marvel at.

Track Listing:-

1 Last Night's Floor
2 Let's Throw Knives
3 Playing the Martyr
4 No Signal
5 Whatever The Cost
6 Batteries
7 First Sickness
8 Mothball Fleet (Counterattack)
9 Good Times Without
10 It's Not That Bad
11 Watering Hole
12 The Dining Dead