Music Banter - View Single Post - Baroness

RVCA · 07-14-2012, 12:31 AM

copying my review from RYM

Quote:

As a total Baroness fanboy, it pains me to do this, but after a dozen listens I'm dropping the 3-star-bomb.

It's an okay double album-- overproduced in places (the autotune on "Mtns" is just unforgivable) and plagued with tedious arena rock ("The Line Between" being the worst offender, "Take My Bones Away" another example), but nothing is quite so bad as Baizley's lack of mid-ranged alt-rock vocal ability.

He annoyed me on their EPs with his indecipherable and unrefined bellowing, and I thought he'd realized his limitations when Red and Blue saw a drastic decrease in both the intensity and frequency of his vocals, but then he went and plastered Y&G. The lyrics are interesting enough (though sometimes irritating-- "Little Things") but there are too many cringe-inducing moments (the crooning on "Foolsong") that make me wonder if all the other band members were too big-a pushovers to say "Hey man, this sounds kinda bad. Maybe we should stick to being a mostly-instrumental group, it worked pretty well on Red and Blue."

The album does have some redeeming qualities though. "Strechmarker" is a fantastic, atmospheric, acoustic interlude, similar to the intros/interludes found on prior albums. "Eula" and "March to the Sea" are as good as any Baroness, and the theme tracks flow nicely throughout and mesh well with the closer "If I Forget Thee, Lowcountry".

I've read a number of interviews with Baizley regarding this album, and while I can appreciate his frankness in wanting to progress as an artist regardless of what he thinks (or his critics think) his audience wants, I think he's shown us that the group has either lost their chemistry with the lineup changes, or doesn't have the knack for this type of music-- or both.