The second song on the self-titled release by Finland\u2019s Delay Trees contains a typo, I\u2019m pretty sure of it. It\u2019s listed as \u201cCassette 2012,\u201d but I\u2019m convinced a zero should be where the one resides, and I base this belief on purely historical reasons. There\u2019s no way a song this derivative could evoke the future, even while cleverly paired with a term so ingrained in the past. No, it must be 2002, cause that\u2019s where I heard this all before.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not one to go after bands for sounding like other bands \u2014 hell, everyone in some way mimics the many bands before them \u2014 but to become pertinent there has to be a moment of separation. Listen after listen of Delay Trees elicited a wealth of influences (Athlete, Coldplay, Mighty Lemon Drops, Ocean Blue), but never once did I stop to think about the band Delay Trees. The song \u201cLight Pollution\u201d proved the Final Straw (as in Snow Patrol\u2019s 2003 album) on any sense of originality.<\/p>\n
So I hated it, right? Not so fast. For as copycat as Delay Trees is, the band is at least aping the best elements of good bands. The album-opening \u201cGold\u201d sets a soothing atmospheric mood, with lead singer Rami Vierula angling his voice to meet the constant rise of the dissonance around him. The aforementioned \u201cCassette 2012\u201d is as peppy and playful as it is predictable, while \u201cTarantula\/Holding Out\u201d is the closest Delay Trees comes to breaking out, only to spend the song\u2019s last two minutes bowing at the Chris Martin alter.<\/p>\n
And this ails the band \u2014 when the songs tarry, they become parody. Had \u201cTarantula\/Holding Out\u201d ended at three in a half minutes instead of five and a half, there would be no time for overt comparisons. \u201cIn February\u201d suffers the same fate, as it merges from a nice little pop song into an unremarkable clutter of strings, synths and vocal echoes. Is that the best you can do?<\/p>\n
The album ending \u201c4:45 AM,\u201d which I suppose is meant to put the listener to sleep, approaches seven minutes of elevator music. When Vierula sings \u201cBut my dearest don\u2019t you change\/ Just stay here with me waiting\u201d my immediate thought was to yell \u201cRun\u201d (which also happens to be the name of a great Snow Patrol song).<\/p>\n
Change is good. Life is too short for recycled songs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The second song on the self-titled release by Finland\u2019s Delay Trees contains a typo, I\u2019m pretty sure of it. It\u2019s listed as \u201cCassette 2012,\u201d but I\u2019m convinced a zero should be where the one resides, and I base this belief on purely historical reasons. There\u2019s no way a song this derivative could evoke the future, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[339],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-delay-trees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1259,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions\/1259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}