KWCW

If anyone hates glee clubs as much as I do, it might just be Oxford Collapse. No, they’re not from the fine English college town, but yes, they do play instruments, or rather, assail and attack with trebly guitar riffs, pokey drum fills and nary a downtempo beat. Sure, you might argue that something without vocals would make a better antidote to the poisonous evils of a cappella, maybe that new Explosions in the Sky record or even a John Zorn piece, but be realistic: some of us prefer catchy rollicking indie rock to self-indulgent experimentalism. And A Good Ground gives you many more-than-modest helpings of that ol’ down home jangle pop, even country-fying the album with titles like “Dusty Horses Practice”, “Empty Fields” and “Flora Y Fauna”.

As for the singing, there’s certainly no vocally-imitated guitar solos, falsetto is rare and shy yelps are preferred to mediocre grandstanding. And instead of arranging some banal Top 40 song with a beatboxer, Oxford can make even the simplest melodies, like that of “Cracks in the Causeway”, float over a light 4-minute jam.

Check out “Proofreading” first. For some reason it reminds me of Pete and Pete, the episode where the boys hire Artie to beat up the local vocal group.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2006 at 2:15 am and is filed under Indie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.