posted 08/16/2006 (Wed) @ 01:34 pm
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Gatsbys American Dream - Gatsbys American Dream (2006)
Gotta use who you can…
- You All Everybody
- We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
- Badd Beat
- My Name Is Ozymandias
- Margaritas and Cock
- Station 5: The Pearl
- Shadow of the Colossus
- Filthy Beasts
- Looks Like The Real Thing
- Me and Ed Loyce
- The White Mountains
Typically, the eponymous debut is the music industry standard. If you release a self-titled album after a stream of otherwise titled output, it’s because your band is running out of steam creatively. So it’s ironic that this is Gatsby’s American Dream’s self-titled record, their name here giving the old one finger salute to the American music business.
For anyone new to the game, this four-piece melds progressive rock and punk in a manner that has the end result of sounding like Rush being obliterated by a tank with Bach and Jello Biafra at the wheel. “Dream pop” is about the farthest away from Gatsby’s intricate, “distortion-blitzed” squall as one can get, though it might be accurate to call their work pop music that hammers its way into your dreams. The band’s mission statement, at least partially, pops up here in a most unlikely place, on “Margaritas and Cock”: “I’ve gotta write these songs to remind you that you believe in music.”
It’s another helping of more of the same with “Gatsby’s American Dream,” but having lyrical targets like literature and the sins of the music industry continuously on their horizon is at least more entertaining than album after album of love unrequited. Anti-music industry tirades crossbred with (some might say haphazard) references to literature comprise the lyrical content of Gatsby’s back catalog. The arrangement and composition of their music has always far outstripped the frustration evident in Gatsby’s lyrics. And frustrated though they may be, the words are clever. This record is no exception.
“Gatsby’s American Dream” is probably the most bitter and direct denunciation of the corporate element of any of the band’s efforts, however (with the possible exception of the “In The Land of Lost Monsters” EP). It speeds along like a bullet fired from a riot gun, clocking in at a mere 33 minutes and some change, biting the hand that feeds by way of satirical rants like “Badd Beat” and the Coldplay-riff-lifting “Filthy Beasts” (”Some things you can’t protect…”) all along the way.
Though it feels like a stopgap record to start, “Gatsby’s American Dream” has politics AND drunken harmonizing, not to mention eleven challenging, and hopefully thought-provoking pieces that summon inspiration from the pages of Philip K. Dick and van treks in the name of music across the miles of the American highway system. It might be outwitted by other albums from this band, but not much else.
1 comment on this article
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Three Star Smash » Blog Archive » Raein - Nati Da Altri Padri (2008) Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 5:03 pm[...] Gatsby’s American Dream with a little extra [...]
