The Loyalty is a four-piece band out of Saratoga Springs, New York. The Loyalty is their debut album. This is off-topic but, for the record, I hate self-titled albums. Writing about them either turns the writer into a pompous ass or the review into a game of Who’s On First.
The Loyalty play seriously melodic guitar pop. Their eponymous album doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but does deliver a collection of catchy mid-tempo anthems and ballads that are made for audience sing-alongs. The album is driven by Travis Gray’s simple, but spot-on, vocal delivery. Lyrically, The Loyalty is personal without being intimate and while at times the lyrics skirt around the edges of cloying sap (“11:11″) they never descend far enough into cliche to quite get there.
Standout tracks are “Coming Clean, ” “Deny” and “Try to Forget.”
Yesterday I wrote about a British group who sounds like they’re from the Midwest. Today I’ve got US band who thinks they’re from the UK. Or at least spells like it. Colour Revolt is a five-piece band out of Oxford, Mississippi. The eccentric spelling came about because the band took the name from Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, a social satire of Victorian England. This is now officially my favorite back-story for the naming of a band.
Plunder, Beg, and Curse is the first full-length album from Colour Revolt, following their decidedly excellent self-titled EP. The band writes bluesy indie-rock and Plunder, Beg, and Curse has the same laid back, low fidelity feel to it as the best Delta blues music. The sound is heavy on guitars and gravelly, crooning vocals. Colour Revolt band cranks up the intensity a bit on a few songs (“Swamp”), but the album is at its best on the slower numbers. The lyrics are intelligent (you’d expect that from a band whose name comes from a 19th century satire), relatively accessible, and focus on larger themes. Lead singer Jesse Coppenbarger’s delivery is wonderfully nuanced and equally convincing when channeling Old South blues and the band’s hard rock influences.
Standout tracks are “Elegant View,” “Moses of the South” and “Innocent and All.”
Portman is a band of five guys who claim to be from Stamford, UK, but their sound is solid Midwest guitar rock ala The Get Up Kids, so despite the evidence I’m not quite buying it. From Here To Your Eyes And Ears is their debut album. It is comprised mostly of mid-tempo indie ballads that are brilliantly executed.
The album is bookended by instrumental tracks that sample speeches from The Great Dictator and Serenity. These set an ambitious, if somewhat bewildering, framework around the album. Both speeches deal heavily with themes of defiance of an oppressive government, but the rest of the album is intensely personal. Portman’s lyrics are almost confessional in their intimacy and seem a bit out of place when framed by such an expansive theme, although that may have been the point.
Portman’s greatest strength on From Here To Your Eyes And Ears is putting together numbers that careen from acoustic ballad to strident indie rock and back again in the same song without feeling overly experimental or disconnected. The vocal delivery is wonderfully dynamic and channels a bit of a Brand New circa Your Favorite Weapon vibe.
Standout tracks are “I Can Do Anything (I’m The Chief of Police),” “Back To Default” and “Can’t Stop The Signal.”
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