Name: Portable
Album: Secret Lift
Year: 1999
Style: Power Pop, Garage Rock
Similar Bands: Third Eye Blind, Everclear, Matchbox 20, Tonic, Our Lady Peace, Sister Hazel, Ours
"One-Word" Review: Brash, Middling Rock
Based Out Of: LA, CA
Label: TVT Records
Secret Life (1999)
- What's Wrong 3:40
- Help Yourself 2:58 (single)
- Boy-Girl 4:40
- medicate it 2:30
- Redlight 4:29
- Step On It, Go! 3:32
- Erasable 3:04
- Restraint 4:26
- One Thing I Know 3:39
- All Over Again 4:24
- Terrible Two 4:48
- Silence Please 4:55
Album Rating (1-10): 6.5
Members & Other Bands:
- Chance Hutchison - Vox, Guitar
- Gus Cicari - Guitar
- Jeff Menke - Bass
- Brian Lovy - Drums (The Kind, Anthony Castelo, Chance, Forever Like Red)
- Terri Nunn - Vox (Berlin, Ish, Sisters of Mercy, Pino Donaggio, Khadja Nin, Dan Siegel, Pamela Moore, Mariya Takeuchi)
- Matt Wallace - Produced, Mixed
- Mike Landolt - Engineer
- Mitch Rellas - Engineer
- James Murray - Asst Engineer
- Vicky Hamilton - Career Direction
- Warren Entner - Career Direction
- Sean Roberts - A&R Direction
Unknown-ness: Never heard of this band. Based on the cover, which looks like a Warhol 4-pane color study of a speaker (hubcap? drain?) and the dudes in suits on the back, i'm guessing they are a high energy, garage rock band; even if one has a goatee /soul patch combo. But it is on TVT, so perhaps they have a darker, industrial element?
Album Review: I've listened to it once straight through, and at different points got notes of Green Day or the Strokes, but overall, this is some middle of the road rock, with some Third Eye Blind like, non-memorable vocals. The music also tries to surge, but also ends up being quite middling. Sorry to say, but this feels like the sort of music frat bros in college who have no taste in music get excited about. There's nothing either wrong nor memorable about this album. The song "Redlight" has a bit of a Muse / Ours vibe to it.
This, their debut album contains, the 5 sounds from their EP, which came out a few months earlier. Menke left the band after this record, and Sebastian Ciceri, Gus's brother, took over bass by 2000. Apparently the bland sound was left to this first record, and the second was seen as more adventurous by the band. Their third that never came to completion was on path to being much more representative to their live sound.
Stand Out Track: Step On It, Go!
Links:
Exclaim!
Discogs
Allmusic
Ink19 Levy interview
Sebastian Ciceri Wiki
No comments:
Post a Comment