137 [AKA: ONE THREE SEVEN]

Beautifully arranged and performed post/poppish melancholy with fine contrasts between the delicate and intense. Soord's vocals are smooth and dreamy, and if not excellent are certainly enjoyable, while his guitar does an equal amount of leg work in driving home the emotive atmosphere with good riffing throughout and a few eruptive, dynamic solos as well. Keyboard effects and samples round compliment the overall effect, which grows on the listener. Being rather lengthy, "137" has a few fillerish moments, but in my opinion the good far outweighs the bad-- especially with strong songs like "Lay it on the Tracks", "Doppler", the moody instrumental "Release the Tether" and the dynamic "Pvs".

Comparisons to Radiohead/Porcupine Tree are a stretch, but fans from either of those bands will likely find a lot to like in "137", despite it not being quite as creative as either of those two band's releases. Recommended!

Songwriting: 3 Instrumental Performances: 3 Lyrics/Vocals: 4 Style/Emotion/Replay: 4