I was watching a documentary on punk music the other day \u2014 you know, the ones VH1 Classic shows on Sunday afternoons \u2013 and a musician from the early age of punk said he never thought he\u2019d be in a band because he didn\u2019t know how to play an instrument. \u201cBut when I heard the Ramones, I realized I didn\u2019t have to know too much about how to play music to be in a band,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And while it\u2019s true the Ramones were never the most musically skilled, the band hit upon a meaningful formula which changed the landscape. It\u2019s a pattern that repeats and repeats decade after decade, and is only problematic when the formula is so worn it becomes cliche.<\/p>\n
The start of the 2000-teens has seen an uptick of dreamy-pop bands which, much like those early punk bands, works on a well-framed recipe. Mix three-chord jangly, surf guitar (make sure the reverb is on), ethereal lyrics about the environment, dreams or being in love, and a female singer (this is KEY). Best Coast and Dum Dum Girls are two bands which hit this trend with some success, and now entering the fray is Seattle\u2019s Seapony with its debut Go With Me.<\/p>\n
Paced by Jen Weidl (female singer, check), guitarist Danny Rowland and bassist Ian Brewer, Go With Me\u2019s dozen songs zoom by in an economic 35 minutes. The opening track \u201cDreaming\u201d (check) sets the tone, as the two-minute tune is simple and catchy, all jangle (check) and drum machine. And while I\u2019d like to think when Weidl sings \u201cI don\u2019t really feel like everybody else\u201d she does so with a knowing wink and nod, it\u2019s readily apparent Seapony doesn\u2019t know (or doesn\u2019t care) about its tacit lack of originality.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a thought: Don\u2019t name a song \u201cInto the Sea\u201d (environment, check) if it sounds a lot like \u201cKilling An Arab\u201d (lyrics: Staring at the sea\/ Staring at the sand) unless you want people to stop and say \u201cdoesn\u2019t this sound like \u2018Killing An Arab\u2019?\u201d The churning guitar lick in \u201cGo Away\u201d doesn\u2019t, as it returns in the next track \u201cAlways\u201d with the same tonal charge as if to say \u201cYeah, we steal from ourselves, too.\u201d The drum track from \u201cAlways\u201d appears four songs later in \u201cWhere We Go,\u201d which if phrased as a question could be answered \u201cBack from where we were.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong, Go With Me is not a poor piece of music \u2013 it\u2019s listenable in a way background music is at a hip party of 20-somethings. But this territory is well trodden and Seapony\u2019s effort, if I can be so banal, is a rip off the old rock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was watching a documentary on punk music the other day \u2014 you know, the ones VH1 Classic shows on Sunday afternoons \u2013 and a musician from the early age of punk said he never thought he\u2019d be in a band because he didn\u2019t know how to play an instrument. \u201cBut when I heard the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[497,496],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-go-with-me","tag-seapony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","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=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1547,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}