On their latest album, Eight, Los Angeles indie stalwarts Radar Brothers try for a sweet spot between post-grunge foolishness and drowsy millennial reverb-rock. The result: an album that skims the water rather than soaring above the clouds, but one whose many familiar aspects make it a very listenable affair. An album untroubled by high ambitions of its own, Eight opts instead for a study and apply approach to indie rock experimentation.
This album nods enthusiastically to an impressive back-catalogue of once subversive indie rock which has since been acknowledged as radio-friendly. The influence of bands like Radiohead and Grandaddy is at the forefront, with wormy and sometimes downright English-sounding chord progressions fused with a distinctly Californian approach to guitar playing. Songs like “Couch” exhibit the same open-air guitar riffs as a song like Grandaddy’s “The Crystal Lake.” The surprisingly catchy “Angler’s Life,” on the other hand, blends Pearl Jam grunge verses with a psychedelic chorus to form one of the album’s most distinguishable songs.
That Radar Brothers don’t quite fill out the musical boundaries negotiated by their peers and predecessors isn’t necessarily a fault. Radar Brothers act, to an extent, as an answer to anyone who was legitimately angry at Radiohead for abandoning “guitar music” on Kid A. Radar Brothers are making music which might seem experimental and ambitious to someone, but to most will seem dated and tame. This album might not sound exactly like earlier Radar Brothers releases, but the difference doesn’t necessarily mean progress has occurred, and Eight does sound like something that could have been made at any point in their career.
My biggest issue with Eight, though, is its lack of any substantial atmosphere or mood. The songs are almost sorrowful, and their lyrics almost clever; riffs are nearly unmanageable and vocals are just short of interesting. Nothing goes to enough of an extreme to distinguish this album’s sound from any other piece of guitar-driven indie rock. The production on Eight falls kind of flat, with barely anything on the album given enough weight to fill out a pair of even moderately decent headphones. This might be a small gripe, especially coming from someone who listens to a lot of music on noisy subway trains, but it would be nice if the reverb-drenched guitars on Eight sound like they were actually reverberating.
Ultimately, this album doesn’t really impress – but it doesn’t seem like it’s meant to, either. Eight is a fairly solid album driven by good songwriting and crafted by indie vets who clearly know what they’re doing, but have fallen short of something spectacular this time around. Radar Brothers may have done well to consider that an experimental shift in sound relative to their own discography may end up sounding pretty ordinary relative to a greater body of contemporary music.
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