Wednesday, January 08, 2014

14 Reviews for 2014: #7, Wild Flag - Wild Flag (2011)

This "indie supergroup" combines Carrie Brownstein, Janet Weiss, (two-thirds of Sleater-Kinney)Mary Timony (Helium, solo), and Rebecca Cole (The Minders) and was a promising collaboration on paper.


The headline is:  the album is very listenable and a very nice debut.  The subheadline is:  too bad it's schizophrenic.

There are great harmonies and hooks here.  It's a bit more produced, polished, and proper than Sleater-Kinney, but it still rocks.  And Janet Weiss is SO underrated as a drummer, it's criminal.


Wild Flag - "Romance"


The issue here is that it's almost like listening to two separate albums:  the Brownstein songs have a slightly different timbre, tone, and tension than the Timony ones.  (We're working on perfecting alliteration today.)  Now it's not as bad as Bad Lieutenant, but it still sounds like sibling bands rather than one unified presence.  

Brownstein's songs are ultimately the more aggressively hooky ones, and thus IMHO more musically interesting (except for Timony's standout "Black Tiles").  Timony, on the other hand, has the superior voice, so ultimately there is a tradeoff.  

Still -- I like it.  It's ultimately vociferous, splendiferous, and mellifluous.  (We're also working on perfecting our "Don King" today.)

CD Placement Rating:  Portable CD Player.

- Snilch

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