Music Review: Dredg
The last thing I want to be is one of those people who only listens to indie rock. But Leitmotif, the first full-length offering from the San Francisco based Dredg, not only makes me want to listen to only indie rock, it almost makes me not want to ever listen to another album.
Leitmotif, which means a melodic passage or phrase associated with a specific character, situation or element, begins innocently enough, with a song that has come to be known as “Symbol Song” because the name of the song is a symbol that cannot be recreated on a keyboard. “Symbol Song” is an impressively electric instrumental jam, and no other song could have possibly started off this album so well.
Each song flows so stylistically well into the next that I was unsure when one song started and the next began, making the album a giant blur of originality and artistry. This was able to come to be because the band drew out maps for each song and for the album to place riffs in each song, and the songs themselves exactly where they needed to be, which may have lead to the title of the song “Movement 1: @ 45 Degrees N. 180 Degrees W.”
Unfortunately, Leitmotif’s last song, “Movement V: 90 Hour Sleep,” falls apart, as it seems the band got a little too cool for its artistic britches. This twenty-minute opus comes complete with five minutes of dead air after, leading into a secret song that is better left undiscovered. When sound finally arises again, it’s an annoyingly high guitar-based jam played over indiscernible background music.
The album as a whole still stands pretty strongly though. Dredg is a pleasant mix between Pink Floyd, Radiohead and Dreamtheater, only a hell of a lot harder and a hell of a lot cooler.
****
Popularity: unranked [?]
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