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Countless Thousands
We're Just Really Excited to Be Here
www.facebook.com/countlessthousands
If nothing else, the album title for this debut by the Garden
Grove-based trio is pretty accurate–they do sound excited from the
get-go, practically revelling in the kind of anthemic,
clean-but-charging commercial indie that might as well be arena rock with lots
of smiles more than lots of explosions. The expected hints and nods are
all there–U2's ringing melodrama, the Arcade Fire's big wailing,
Interpol's if-only-we-were-postpunk-for-real starlust, flecks of Blink-182 in a more “mature” phase and more–all given a dollop of radio-ready sheen, suitable for song placement on a TV show at some point soon.
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The downside of all this is that it's a band still so understandably in debt to its inspirations that it can feel a bit brash and hollow at points, enthusiasm trumping impact. Even “The Asskickers' Union,” nothing but vocals and
acoustic guitar, rips along as something that seems to want a huge
clap-shoutalong accompaniment, quieting down for a seemingly random Lady
Gaga slam precisely so it can be sung along with all that much more
loudly. And while the stab at funk on “Too Close to Call” may be well
intentioned, it's no Funkadelic (or Gang of Four, for that matter).
So what works best? Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's when things get a
little subtler–not necessarily quieter, but more able to sneak in sideways. So “Minor Sounds of
Inconvenience,” with a taut swing to its arrangement, has a
none-more-eighties-revival chorus but an even better verse with a calmer, desperate edge, while “The Patriot” turns out to be a pretty deft slam on mindless jingoism that brings out the group's professed rockabilly love in engaging fashion. Meanwhile, even something as simple as taking a busy
performance, stripping it back a bit for the break and then ripping into
a huge blast of an ending, as on “A Pirate's Shanty,” shows the trio does have a knack for making the familiar sound engaging.
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