Monday, November 22, 2010

Sway's Album Has Nothing New

This is going to be mostly a skip week, since I'm on vacation and yet swamped with baby care, and my folks are coming up from St. Louis for Thanksgiving. But I've got this for you:
This Was Tomorrow
Download here
  • Sway - This Was Tomorrow (self-released) [swaypop.com]
    • Second full-length from this San Luis, CA, four-piece. Officially released tomorrow.
    • Pretty shoegaze with electro beats, if you're into that. Nothing really new here. 
    • The vocals remind me of Death Cab For Cutie. And I don't say that in a good way.
    • For me, this is about as bad as shoegaze gets. But many will like it a lot.
    • You can stream it for free here if you're interested.
Sorry, I can't be bothered to stream anything from this album for you here, but you're not missing much. Have a great week. I'll be back in full force next week. Happy Thanksgiving!

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review Scott!
    Congrats on the birth of your kids! I'm a father too, so I understand about being tired, which you clearly are.
    Cheers!
    PS Keep working on that drum programming, you'll get there.
    <3 Andrew

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Scott,

    found your review via Google. You know what? I do not get it. I mean the main statement about "nothing new". Especially since we are talking shoegaze here (well, in this case I would rather call new Sway as "pop" in good sense of that word). What are some of the best records this year? Butterfly Explosion, Dive, Tears Run Rings, Highspire, SPC Eco's EP's, Broken Little Sister, Maikotobranco, Mellowyellow single, Young Prisms (well, officialy 2011), Spotlight Kid's EP and 7" were also fine and I could go on from shoegaze to dream pop ala High Violets. Was there anything new? Sure, there were some good new songs. But I assume by "new" you mean something innovative, something we have not heard before. You know what? I cannot remember the last time this thing happened to me. Maybe on Jack EP from Moose or Naked Souls' early tape (because of the way Milan Sip played his bass). BTW I played songs on your MySpace and I quite honestly did not hear anything new at all either. "Nothing at All" for example is quite catchy tune but if it had a bit stronger vocal I would think it comes from some Sarah compilation.

    I won't lie. I am rather old school too and unlike you, I would not mind if Sway did not change a thing and released Millia EP vol. 2. That said, the new album is pretty catchy and juicy (dream) pop stuff IMO. I guess I am one of those people you mentioned in your piece (those who will like it). It is different from previous Sway works. BTW I believe it is Sway's first full lenght. I would not count Nothern Two as Sway CD. As far as I know there was only s/t CDEP, The Millia Pink and Green EP and then Winter Heart 12" on Claire's Echo.

    Any how. No big deal. I respect your opinion even though I do not understand it much. Like I said just found your place on Google. Would be interesting if you could write something about newness in shoegaze or music in general.

    Best regard
    Milos

    P.S. Actually there is one "new" trend this year. Never heard shoegaze disco before. This year there was Soundpool (which I did not enjoy as much), also Guitaro, which grows on me :D. And also Panda Riot had some disco element on their 2010 EP.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yo dudes, thanks much for the comments.

    Mr. Saks, if I found a post like the one I wrote about my own album, I would probably be throwing up right now. I never considered that one of the band members might read this. I am very sorry because I obviously offended you.

    To both of you, this is not a review blog. It is not meant to be professional in any way. It's just a sharing blog, really. It's me and you meeting outside a gig and talking about the latest sounds. It's me spouting off my immediate reaction to what I hear.

    This new album obviously has a lot of work put into it, and probably thousands of dollars more than my own album did, if we really need to compare them. I can hear the quality of work and the time spent on drum programming! For what it is, it's actually an awesome album. It's just not my cup of tea, and that's all I meant by what I wrote.

    By the way, my album was meant to be ugly, dirty, DIY rock-'n'-roll. The drumming was minimal on purpose. I didn't want it to sound like a lot of time was spent on it, because for me, that's not rock-'n'-roll. That's why I don't listen to music like Sway's.

    When I said there's nothing new here, that was just me trying to politely say that I hate it and never want to hear it again. hoky, I'm afraid you took me way too seriously, and I don't care about any of that stuff you wrote. But I'm glad you're enjoying music in your own way.

    So Andrew, while I don't regret what I wrote, I do regret that you read it, and again, I'm very sorry you "overheard" my comments to the noise-pop enthusiasts out there. But I wouldn't want someone who loves the music I love to think that they should buy your album, and that's why this blog exists.

    And if you think I'm just a jerk, well, I'm just a noise punk at heart, so whatever. Sorry.

    Thanks for the congrats!

    ReplyDelete
  4. sweatervest?....really gelfling?...really

    ReplyDelete
  5. I had no idea the flower-gaze scene had gotten so annoying. So it's not just the music. That makes sense. Now that I know, I'm removing that sub-genre of shoegaze from the set of genres that I talk about on this blog. This blog is not for you, sirs.

    ReplyDelete