Sea Wolf: “Leaves in the River”
Rating: 2.5 out of five stars
Sounds like: Andrew Bird, Ambulance LTD, Alexi Murdoch
On their debut CD, Sea Wolf offers a surprisingly respectable, if not respectably surprising collection of songs. One of the most notable aspects that set this band apart from their contemporaries is the inclusion of a cello. While it can, and in a few instances does, lend its unique timbre to the otherwise straight ahead soft indie rock context, it is also shamefully underused. The band, it seems, prefers to stick to a familiar sound. Lyrics like, “Tonight I will love you forever,” (Middle Distance Runner), more hackneyed than profound, echo this effect.
At their worst, Sea Wolf sound like those girls in high school who wore black tutus, wrote lots of bad poetry and reasoned that they must be so deep because they couldn’t figure themselves out. And indeed, a sampling of titular words off of “Leaves” includes “winter”, “black”, “dead”, “cold”, and “dark.”
Sea Wolf finds lots of relatively uninteresting ways to portray their own isolation and failure.
The CD isn’t terrible, it just doesn’t quite try hard enough. Some songs do stand out; give “Black Dirt” a spin and listen for Aaron Robinson’s guitar howl. And Byron Reynolds works extra hard behind the set to propel the band and give even the most emo songs a toe-tapping lift when everyone else wants to wallow. If you like soft indie music, Sea Wolf is about as typical as it gets. What they do, they do well; just hope that for their next release, they take some more liberties.
Popularity: unranked [?]
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