Heave Media

During my freshman year of college, I fell in with a group of kids who created their own music.  You know the type: they holed up in their dorm rooms for 18 hours on end with only the sound of synthesizers, 8 bit beat processors, and pot smoke spilling out from under the cracks.  The end-result: an awkward listening party over lunch brought up to your room from the cafeteria where you try desperately to let your friend know that they should probably not get so caught up in attempts at being intellectual. 

It was nearly impossible to get this image out of my head during every listen to Graham Smith’s Accept The Mystery.  While a valiant effort, the self-described “indie power pop rock” brought to my ears this week feels like little more than these sophomoric efforts.  

The album kicks off with “Los Papas,” a buoyant jaunt through lyrical tongue-twisting and hyper-happiness, which, at first, is pleasantly jubilant.  Full of quirk and wit, Smith’s brand of electro pop is at first infectious.   

Jump three tracks in, though, and the delicate combination of Atmosphere/Slug-esque lyrical intellectualism begins to work against the newly erratic Atom-and-his-Package-background sounds to create something “new.”  Both ends of the sound are distinctly refined and well-done – the lyrics interesting (however excessive, and despite rhyming PBR with CCR as well as Smith’s nasal drone) and the beats/melodies tight – but there’s a level of discord in how the elements come together. 

There are standout moments, however.  “Indigo Ink” is a distinctly dark ode to whiskey, wine, and losing friends that holds its own.  “Jeff,” in much the same way, departs from the synth-based melodic overload of the rest of the album with a plucked out melody and a tempo that slows the definitively emotion-fueled music down to a pace that is digestible. 

And perhaps that’s where this album really fell short: it’s extremely personal.  These are the rantings straight from the brain and heart of Graham Smith in a much more pleasant manner than, say, Xiu Xiu.  For this level of personality, this precious of a “share” within the music, warrants time and patience.  Accept The Mystery, Smith’s tenth release, falls short of this realization and results in only a fair body of work.