posted 05/10/2006 (Wed) @ 05:04 pm
>>> Music Reviews
Fair to Midland - inter.funda.stifle (2004)
Dreams splendidly weaved from an atom bomb
- Preambles In 3rd Person
- Dance Of The Manatee
- Vice/Versa
- Cipieron
- A Seafarer’s Knot
- Orphan Anthem ‘86
- Inter.mission
- Granny Niblo
- The Walls Of Jericho
- Abigail
- Timbuktu
- Kyla Cries Cologne
- Upgrade^Brigade
- When The Bough Breaks
- Quince
Until recently, Fair to Midland was an unsigned anomaly from Dallas, TX, waiting for their big break like any other group of musicians. Well, not quite. It sounds lame on the tongue, but it’s truly the synergy of each individual member — what each one brings to the table — that sets Fair to Midland apart from their peers (if such bands exist).
The phrase that comes to mind listening for the first time is probably alt-metal… but wait, electronica samples… ’80s chorus guitar? Opera vocals? Native American throat-singing? This deserves to play on stereos outside of Dallas.
Andrew Sudderth’s vocals careen wildly between the extremes of an over-the-top grunt/yell unlike anything you’ve ever heard, to a delicate Wall of Voodoo Leslie-speaker-in-the-throat quaver. But it’s not just the vocals. Drum and bass hold down the stop-start rhythms, and shimmery guitar lines float in air until being crushed by iron-cast six-string growl, tethered by the whine of electronic jet engines and childlike Casio tone melodies buried under the din.
The entire production shines and sounds positively face-melting. Springy, rubbery guitar lines bounce off of church bells and a skittering piano line in “A Seafarer’s Knot.” “The Walls of Jericho” opens with a Morse code synth line and quickly expands into an electronica-tinged rock rollercoaster with Sudderth hitting notes higher than Fair to Midland’s lyricist; there’s more manic street preaching about nuclear bombs, chemists and butchers, oil and blueprints on this album than from the Manic Street Preachers themselves, and the music is even more bombastic and explosive, at times marrying alt-metal guitar crunch to a regal, almost baroque harpsichord arrangement. The bright, jangly, sparsely-arranged “Quince” finishes the record like a fever breaking, with the promise of more to come. Perhaps with the band’s recent deal with Serjical Strike Records (a record label founded by System of a Down’s Serj Tankian), Fair to Midland will get the chance to be more than fair to more than the midland.
Highly recommended to anyone, especially fans of Mansun, The Cult, Coheed and Cambria.
1 comment on this article
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Three Star Smash » Archives » Opus Dai - Touch The Sun [EP] (2008) Says:
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:32 pm[...] in 2006. As if sensing the need for a record to tide us over in-between albums from dredg or Fair to Midland, these Angelino alt-metalheads “Rain”-ed down old school crunchy guitars and gripped [...]
