« Tullycraft | Main | Spoon »
Pompeii
Lots of bands aspire to make grandiose, room-filling pop-rock but few succeed because it's too easy to collapse into stereotypes and well-trodden cliches. Pompeii, unlike others, successfully propel its chiming, mid-tempo indie-pop well above the fray. They're a sweet, melodic but melancholy band, unabashedly bittersweet, with their hearts on their sleeves. Often compared to Death Cab for Cutie, Pompeii's work is a lot meatier and darker than that band's comparable early offerings; in the end, comparing these two bands doesn't give the whole sotry..
This sort of arms-wide rock depends on not just sophisticated, shimmering instrumentation and moody atmospherics, but both of those, done extremely well. And Pompeii has both of those items down pat, but with a unique slant. Singer Dean Stafford has a somber but warm tenor that works with the band's chiming guitars and clattering drums, as Caitlin Bailey's cello quietly fills the gaps. Bailey gives the band extra texture, and the interplay of the melodic bass lines and her rasping strings gives Pompeii's low end unexpected depth, with layers upon layers upon layers.
Pompeii's music is not indie pop, or indie rock, or straight up goth or emo. It's all these things, and in the end, you can't write them off as just another indie rock stereotype. That's probably why Pompeii's beautiful music is so affecting.
Pompeii - Assembly
Pompeii - Miracle Mile
Visit Pompeii's official site. Buy Assembly from Amazon.
Posted by Queen of the Front Row at 03.12.07 at 7:59 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Please note: songs are only kept online for a short period of time.
Some HTML is allowed. You may use these tags: a href, b, i, br /, p, strong, em, ul, ol, li, blockquote, pre.
