WE BECAME YOUR FAMILY WHEN YOU DIED

The youth of today..........

Post rock is a genre I feel unsure about, being a middle aged man. I am fine with death and black metal, not to mention grindcore. But I still feel too old for post rock. The type of music Bullets In Madison plays.

This album is a free download too and I simply cannot understand why none of my able bodied, brainy fellow PA members has reviewed it before me. OK, that being a rant from a grumpy old man, but this album should really be a pretty big hit here in PA. Rant over.

The music here is deeply rooted in the world of Sigur Ros. Add some Radiohead too and you get this album. Bullets In Madison does not write songs. They paint songs. Big wall to wall sound painting with themes drawn out over several minutes. Riffs ? Hardly any. Themes ? There is ten of them. As many as there are tracks here.

Their paint brushes is guitars, sorrow filled vocals, some keyboards, violins (sampled ?), bass and drums. All of them competently played and very effective applied over the whole canvas.

Quality wise, this album is actually very good. My only gripe and this is a major gripe is the lack of any really great paintings (sometimes called songs/melodies) here. Hence I am reigning in my stars. But as a free download, you cannot go wrong with this album and it is one of the better free downloads out there. I am keeping an eye on this band, although I am probably too old for this genre.

3.5 stars

Bullets In Madison are a post-rock group from the Chicago area, the birthplace of post-rock. Unlike the more instrumental bands from that area, BIM have more in common with the more vocal oriented groups like Sigur Ros. The title of this, their first album, is typical post-rock. The music is very uplifting and melodic for the most part. The sound and production is good.

I like the part in "Impossible Grave" with the handclaps when the vocals come in. "Joel Found His Angel Cowering In The Garden" begins with some spoken word. Drums come in later and then it's instrumental. "Riots" sounds like a cross betwwen Radiohead and U2, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your tastes. "St. Jude" has cool drum machine programming. Nice vocals in this song as well. "Crimes" has some neat glockenspiel(?) and some good drumming at the end.

Overall, this is a good modern rock album, but nothing very challenging or original. Sometimes it sounds like a more progressive Arcade Fire. Recommended to those who like modern vocal oriented post-rock. I thought the playing and sound in general was very well done, but nothing about the compositions themselves were very memorable. A decent effort nonetheless. 3 stars.