Music Vacancy.

Nice album cover!

Album: The Silent Song
Artist: Stagehands

Summed up in one word: Mixed
Would I recommend to others: Sure.
Animal it reminded me of: A slightly more rock focused version of Michigan J. Frog from the Looney Tunes.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: A parliamentary sitting in a dictatorship regime like Cuba or North Korea. I think they’d disagree with a lot of the morals of the album.

Ok. Broadway Rock. It was perfect for opening up my eyes and facial expressions to a new style of music. What I mean by that is I found my face in a confused/disgruntled/annoyed contortion every now and then while listening to this album on the bus. Let’s just say Broadway Rock didn’t seem to be my thing.

That isn’t to say the musicians weren’t talented, they definitely could sing and play! The whole musical format just wasn’t working for me. “Na na na, na na nothing’s wrong” was one of the lyrics for example. Also, who rhymes “so low” with “solo”? Surely that’s cheating.

Well, to be honest, it wasn’t all bad. I liked the first song a bit (the instrumental was enjoyable). “Sailor man sailor man” in which the protagonist talks to a sailor (I enjoyed imagining him as a bearded pirate) was very entertaining. I was walking to catch my morning bus at the time and had a crazy urge to dance a jig.

“Ashley/Searching/La Bibliotheque” was the song i’d heard on their MySpace when they first suggested I give them a try over Twitter. Hearing it again, my thoughts were easily summed up in one word – awesome. The start reminded me of Glee for some reason, other parts reminded me of the Asian music in racing video games (loved it) and it had a guy who sounded a bit like the dude from the B52s in “Love Shack”. So far so good already right?

That’s not all… it had DISCO! SYNTHESISER! It did remind me at first of the “Amazing Horse” song probably because of the disco beat in the background (see the YouTube video to the right – warning though… it’s insane, weird, random, hilarious, “dirty”, rude, not for children and strangely addictive). I think this song will actually stay on my iPod (“Ashley/Searching/La Bibliotheque”… not Amazing Horse… though maybe I should download that on iTunes too).

Does anyone else think that the guy who sounds a little like the guy from the B52s in “Love Shack” looks like a younger version of Andy Lee from Hamish and Andy?

To be honest though, after watching and listening to “La Bibliotheque” many times… It sounds nothing like “Amazing Horse”. At all. Couldn’t bring myself to remove it from the post though.

I probably should explain the story or something of the musical too but you can download it for free and find out yourself instead.

To conclude, “Sailor man sailor man” and especially “La Bibliotheque” brought me crazy joy and happiness. Even some of the other songs grew on me after a while… the styles vary across the album too which was good to see. I’d love to see this band live. I think it would be brilliant. After listening to “La Bibliotheque” at least eight times now, I think I might actually like these guys now.

Thanks to Stagehands for the suggestion! I am wondering if you’ve put some sort of mind manipulation in your music to make me like it after a while. It was mind blowing how much my perception changed after a few days… To everyone else – feel free to suggest any sort of music you think will blow my mind or sanity.