Thursday, October 9, 2008

FAULTER – Darling Buds Of May


FAULTER
Darling Buds Of May
Abacus
6/10




Artsy and melodic, it’s hard to fault Darling Buds Of May, the latest from Faulter, for poor songwriting. You’ll find well-crafted hooks, sweeping melodies and colorful dramatics in bunches here. But these poppy-sounding semi-anthems lack impact. There’s no force behind the majority of these eleven cuts, everything is just sort of dreamy and shimmering and floating atop icy clouds. That’s what Faulter is all about - cold relationships, bittersweet introspection and pungent shoegazing.

Love the record’s sullen, cartoonish digipack, it fits the mood of the music of Faulter just fine. When Faulter kick in a bit of post-hardcore oomph during Holding On, they’re most successful. While they’re at their more thoughtful, the boys in Faulter sound like a smoother-sounding version of The Verve Pipe. That should scare off all of the Mayhem fans right away. For some reason, the frat boy crowd can scare off most everyone but themselves just as well as your average corpsepainted forkpitcher.

So what’s the deal here? This is a really good record from a quite capable and talented outfit if you put it in its proper context, but Darling Buds Of May is too damn jingly, jangly and soft-spoken to attract too many fans of underground music. Urge these darling buds to grow a pair and you just may have a formidable force.



© 2007 ERIN FOX – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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