Heave Media

SPEAK Lackluster On Debut

SPEAK overshoots debut, falls into familiar trap.

SPEAK

Hear Here

Released on Feb 09, 2010

When I received the debut EP from Austin dance-rockers SPEAK, I was certain that I had seen the name somewhere before. Maybe it’s just that SPEAK isn’t a terribly creative name for a band, but there was something stuck in my craw. Immediately, my thoughts turned to the semi-popular California indie-rapper SPEAK. Very close, I know, but that wasn’t it. I hadn’t listened to the backpacker stuff in years, and wouldn’t have known SPEAK from SPEAK. Quite suddenly, I realized what it was that was so familiar. I thought of YACHT. And HEALTH, and MGMT. And then, a pall was cast over the proceedings. It was another goddamned hipster caps-lock band. I feared that my objective evaluation of the group’s work would suffer.  I’m what you might call a Respectable Journalist, though, and my sense of duty won out. And, after all, HEALTH and the rest are able to set themselves apart from each other and from the unfortunate trendiness of their names by the fact that their music is mostly very interesting.  Sadly, with SPEAK, this was not to be the case. Hear Here has some notable influences and persistent hooks, but ultimately is an overproduced, whitewashed bag of pop and dance conventions that plays like a television executive’s computer-generated approximation of what “the club kids are listening to.”

The problems with the EP start with the hyper- glossy vocals of Troupe Gammage, the poppy sheen of which somehow manages to overwhelm both the band and the songs (which are actually mostly decent). To be sure, the pop thing is what the band is going for. Exhibit A:

There is a line, however, between “overdoing it” and overdone, and here, the latter is true of nearly the entire recording. 

The band are good musicians with impressive ability to spot a hook, and in pieces there is quite a bit going for the EP. Mannerisms and production problems aside, Gammage is a polished, controlled singer with very good vocal tone. “I’d Rather Lie” highlights Gammage’s voice, and is generic but meticulously constructed and well-realized  New Wave pop. In a welcome change, the lead vocal (though still shiny and compressed) works nicely with the song.  The song’s refrain “Honey, I’d rather I lie to you” sounds very familiar, and an interesting choral wash that snakes throughout the song and is highlighted at the end adds dimension to an otherwise fairly straight-ahead track.  For extra credit, a very solid acid house-inspired remix of the song on the band’s Myspace.com page is worth listening to.

Opener (and destined CW teen ski-drama single) “Carrie” is annoying, but contains an eminently memorable melody and recognizable nods to New Order.  The Daft Punk-inspired “Stand By Us” starts nicely and has a fantastic opening, the band imploring the listener to “stand by us… we were the ones who made you.” However, the track is too short and an “ironic” high falsetto in the chorus reeks of hip-quotient overkill and brings down the track considerably. When robot voices and a Justin Timberlake sound-alike invade the track a few bars later, we are reminded that, like the EP as a whole, the existence of solid potential does not always make for a solid product. “Foreign Love” doesn’t do much, if only for the unfortunate coincidence of the song’s main melody being almost identical to Julian Casablancas’ recent  “11^th Dimension,” that song’s production and accompaniment being far more interesting than what SPEAK give us.

I think that SPEAK have the potential to be very popular. They’re nice-looking boys with a photographer and songs ready for mass-consumption. As the group progresses, it would be well-advised to either give in completely to its pop fetish and bring the studio-finish of the arrangements to the level of Gammage, or do the opposite and figure out a way to incorporate the vocals and songwriting more fluidly into the next recording’s atmosphere.   And Jesus, enough with the caps-lock, already. 

Posted by Miguel Harvey on Feb 18, 2010 @ 9:00 am

speak, hear here