No great cause for Celebration
Come on, it's a celebration.
Yet one man's celebration may indeed be another man's hangover comedown as the self-titled debut record by Celebration fails to ignite. With David Sitek from TV on the Radio with his hands on the controls, the album will be of interest to those fans of the act but the songs themselves fail to match the quality or inventiveness of the producer's band.
Opening track 'War' starts at a fair pace and is very jazz-tinged, with its constant pattering drum fills and irregular squeals and backing vocals. It's not an immediate track but it's one that will pique your curiosity as opposed to putting you in a headlock and demand you listen on.
Sadly the following tracks are drab low-key affairs with the production creating a mish mash of sounds and it quickly turns into one congealed sound.
The music is that spaced-out indie sound that is popular in America but only seems to gain small pockets of fans in the UK. There are the odd moment where you can see a similarity with the Arcade Fire but as quickly as this thought comes, it passes again, no doubt into a off-tempo freak out. As a full-length record it's hard to maintain enthusiasm for an album that no doubt was fun to write and record as the songs veer off and then lock into repetitive rhythms, but it doesn't flow well in the one listen.
The high-pitched vocals yelp around in a manner reminiscent of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Karen O but the vocals are sat low down in the mix so they don't come across very well.
'New Skin' features some really good organ riffs and the guitars have some life added to them as they sharply repeat over the top of the song but this track merely acts as a wake-up call towards the end of the record as opposed to pulling the sound together.
Closer 'Stars' has a dark menace to it and its bass line prowls menacingly in the background but it only serves to bookend the album and hint at the qualities this band could possess if they made an up tempo record and not one that contains so much downbeat filler as their debut record contains.
There's no real spark or great cohesion to this album, it's very leftfield and even after a few listens, fails to gel or have too many moments that stick in the listener's subconscious.