Aspen It Is Reviewed

Aspen It Is
Release Me From The Weights Of Gravity
(Piermont)

Chubby-faced, peach-fuzzed emo turns from hopeful to overbearing on Release Me From The Weights Of Gravity.

It’s hard to tell from the heavy shading of their Xeroxed press photo, but the members of Aspen It Is appear to be waaay older than 16 (referencing “Fraggle Rock,” “G.I. Joe,” and Nintendo carbon dates to their late 20s). In that case, they have a lot of explaining to do. Release Me is heart-on-sleeve, high-school emo punk at its most forthright, almost painful in its sincerity and debt to bands like The Get Up Kids. Vocalists Jessy Lee and Jimme James wish nothing more than to have sweetie back so they can fucking make it out of here someday. Sounds somewhat Springsteenian when it’s written that way, but really it’s not. At the outset, “Pipe Dreams” and “Absolute Zero Is Silence” would make a killer A/B 7-inch, freakishly nostalgic and wimpy, but addictive all the same. But by the time of “She’s Dead. We’re All Dead,” the urgency becomes a bit repetitive and exponentially more melodramatic. A struggling drum machine adds some spice to the beginning of “The Great Floods Of A Distant World,” but is brutally offset by electric piano, acoustic piano, and rain sound effects. It’s this lack of subtlety that sinks Aspen It Is (not to mention the hidden track), unable to release themselves from their big-rock ideas.

3

— Kevin Keegan

Category: Spins, Weekly