Plucky, effects-laden guitars, a wide array of percussion, and trippy, slightly off-melody lyrics highlight the latest release of Holiday Shores, a promising young group out of Tallahassee. Columbus’d The Whim is a light-hearted, almost playful sounding indie-pop album that brings to mind the the sounds of early Shins with a slight touch of The Beach Boys thrown in for good measure. Anyone ever made that connection before? Each of the ten tracks bounce with individuality, but flow together to create a listening experience that just as enjoyable the fifteenth time as it is the first.
The formula used by Holiday Shores isn’t anything ground breaking, but it’s done extremely well. At its best (Phones Don’t Feud & Edge Of Our Lives) Columbus'd’s tracks welcome you with catchy little guitar riffs, which are joined by simple drum beats and the occasional whacked out keys sprinkled in here and there. All that is pulled together with Nathan Pemberton’s vocals, which are perfectly imperfect and work well with the lo-fi production quality of the album. Where the songs take different turns individually, it’s Pemberton’s vocals that create the bridges between tracks and ultimately give Columbus’d a cohesive feel.
Clocking in at just over 35 minutes, Columbus’d (which I still haven’t really figured out how to say out loud, that’s why I keep typing it) is just long enough for me to get through on my ride to work and leave me in a good mood when I get there. The album has found its way into high rotation here at Empty Reviews, and may have unseeded The Antlers and Harlem Shakes as our favorite indie-rock album of 2009…
We’ll be there to check out Holiday Shores at Hi-Dive in Denver on Monday, November 9th, and so should you.
1 comments:
Sad I missed that show. Album sounds nice.I'm looking for downloads now.
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