The Velocet reviewed
The Velocet
A Quick And Dirty Guide To War
(Eyeball)
The times would indicate an army brat’s album might attempt something substantial, but apparently Michael Davison really just wants to rock like everyone else.
Davison, who fronts Brooklyn’s The Velocet, doesn’t play the troubled outsider or a war/peace moralizer on A Quick And Dirty Guide To War. Crashing out of the gates on “Chinatown,” the band struggle a bit by senselessly adding the NYC post punk drumbeat du jour while recalling a night out. But once it’s out of their system, Guide does its best to push itself down your throat.
Pressure quickly becomes the name of the game with Davison — in a reverbed, Roland Orzabal-like tenor — fending off his past (“Concertina”) while the band hurtle a steady stream of melodic, emo-side-of-Foo-Fighters rock. Lyrically, Guide is clunky at best; the relationships of “Alone In Cologne” and “Year Of The Comet” feel more abstract than personal, and an urge to converse in opaque metaphors burns too hotly for them to resist. It’s a tribute to The Velocet’s melodic sensibility that the record can survive plainly as a rock album — but Davison might want to cook up some post-Cold War ennui just in case.
— Kevin Keegan
Click here to download “Chinatown.”
