Title: Alex I Am Nothing
Format Reviewed: MP3
Format Released: 27th May 2014
Reviewed By: Ben Chapman
North Carolina trio Museum Mouth’s latest album Alex I Am Nothing is their definitely most third and possibly most heartfelt full length album yet.
The album opens well with two jumpy and upbeat tracks despite the record’s ever-looming lyrical theme surrounding an inevitably failed love. Alex Impulse is a strong mix of punk and garage rock, with dramatic highs and lows, finished off with a soaring guitar solo and one final softly sung verse. The heart splattered cuff of a vocal delivery in Drool has the hint of a drone and melody choice like the Cure’s Robert Smith. A keen, boppy chorus characterised by its sudden falsetto howl alternates well with the darker chord movements in the verse.
In Strange the album's focus upon lyrics as a prominent part remains almost overbearingly apparent, though perhaps that's not fair to say of what is after all a concept album. The musical accompaniment remains pleasant throughout, keeping things interesting with various dissonant outbursts towards the end of the track.
By the time we hear Just Friends’ opening line “I just wanna get you into my room”, we've already got the idea. But despite the lyrical predictability, the sustained melodic interlude and messy trudge of guitar chords makes for strong track with a comfortable pace, if anything it manages to relaxedly epitomise Museum Mouth's sound.
In Handsome and Boring the quavering reverb vocals stand out most, bouncing off the bassline's stabbing contributions. The lyrics are some of the most open moments of the album, a mixture of desperate feeling and wry pop culture references almost in the style of Motion City Soundtrack. Their over-repetition does help convey the album's obsessional themes, though perhaps the track suffers from its own inward outpour. Nevertheless, it's a dose of heartfelt and catchy pop-punk, interrupted for its final minute by a decent distantly mixed outro that's effective enough to have deserved a track of its own; it pleasantly turns out to be foreshadowing the backbone melody of the album's closing track. It's touches like this that show Museum Mouth's devotion to the production of their album, along with their proclaiming to have spent around a year self-recording across several basements, bathrooms, and bedrooms across North Carolina.
Sacred’s bassline has a gormless bliss to its plodding melody. The technique of twining of vocal lines that shows up midway through the track, leading the ears through the distorted fuzz, is an effective use of the band's musicianship.
Alex Decider is one of the album's more energetic numbers, which it sometimes feels like the album could do with more of. Distorted low-fi production crashes in, smashing the ears from the outset. Here the unrequited love theme of the angsty concept album is exemplified over some traditional-sounding punk-rock influenced wailing. Museum Mouth wind down the album in the process of proving their affinity for creating effective, nostalgic, and anthemic endings to their tunes, even if the tone of their music may be an acquired taste.
Album ender If I Was Smarter features a sparse arpeggiated guitar line that’s lapped by echoing vocals in canon for a nicely simple but emotional close. An ultimately depressing listen but with a few well considered tunes and riffs. Fans of Museum Mouth's back catalogue will not be disappointed.
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