Julia Conny
05/20/08, 06:35 PM
Love&Reverie - The Mapping
Record Label: Firefly Music
Release Date: December 25, 2007
Appropriately named opener "Birth" starts big and all-at-once with fast instrumentals. The song then gets slower with echoing vocals and reverberating, pricking guitars. This is how we are labored into the escapades of Love&Reverie, a Richmond, Virginia five-piece and their recent full-length, The Mapping. The course of the album switches all around the board, from heavy to slow to delicate to sincere, but Love&Reverie's whole branding is defined by a sound that is decidedly gentle rock. At times, the album is refreshing. And then, at times, the album is regurgitated from bands like Days Away and Rookie of the Year. Mostly it's the former, but mainly because of how the pieces are placed - with great care. Shining brightest from the album's characteristics is the band's attention to detail, which produces an exceptional measure of professionalism.
For the more refreshing points, songs like "The Mapping" and "Footsteps" are both earnest and keyed into the fine precision of guitar melody by axe men Zack Reichert and Josh Breth. Vocalist Noah Skelton traces patterns with his sing-song that prove to be both flexible and well-structured, despite occasionally being overshadowed by his bandmates. On "Death" (the last song on the album, if you couldn't guess), Skelton uses his careful, reserved whisper to eventually let go, and it's an outstanding example of what his vocal work can do.
Most songs on The Mapping meddle in a combination of tempos, making the album a varied assortment of so-said gentle rock. Mountainous between lulls and soaring formations - like the tickling of lead guitar on "Between The Tides" transitioning into heavy strums - The Mapping doesn't sit in one place for long. This makes the album both easy to digest and fluid. It does, however, suffer from it's own sound trap.
Because the band floats along these hilly, wandering guitar-driven landscapes, some of the tracks don't hit hard enough. "Machines" and "Patience", for example, rank up more generic than others like "Footsteps" or the piano-led ending of "The Architect". Also not hitting hard are the lyrics; the album seeps with themes of young love and finding one's self, reading more like a standard journal entry than the bigger theme of second chances and life's inner struggles (hence the "Birth" and "Death", I think). It's underwhelming next to the album's respectable musicianship and professional upkeep, but at least they still have that.
Days Away, Inkwell, The Jealous Sound, Park, Meriwether, Rookie of the YearMyspace (http://www.myspace.com/loveandreverie) | Smartpunk (http://www.smartpunk.com/product.php?item_id=25604) | Lyrics (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=91614698&blogID=333810383)
Record Label: Firefly Music
Release Date: December 25, 2007
Appropriately named opener "Birth" starts big and all-at-once with fast instrumentals. The song then gets slower with echoing vocals and reverberating, pricking guitars. This is how we are labored into the escapades of Love&Reverie, a Richmond, Virginia five-piece and their recent full-length, The Mapping. The course of the album switches all around the board, from heavy to slow to delicate to sincere, but Love&Reverie's whole branding is defined by a sound that is decidedly gentle rock. At times, the album is refreshing. And then, at times, the album is regurgitated from bands like Days Away and Rookie of the Year. Mostly it's the former, but mainly because of how the pieces are placed - with great care. Shining brightest from the album's characteristics is the band's attention to detail, which produces an exceptional measure of professionalism.
For the more refreshing points, songs like "The Mapping" and "Footsteps" are both earnest and keyed into the fine precision of guitar melody by axe men Zack Reichert and Josh Breth. Vocalist Noah Skelton traces patterns with his sing-song that prove to be both flexible and well-structured, despite occasionally being overshadowed by his bandmates. On "Death" (the last song on the album, if you couldn't guess), Skelton uses his careful, reserved whisper to eventually let go, and it's an outstanding example of what his vocal work can do.
Most songs on The Mapping meddle in a combination of tempos, making the album a varied assortment of so-said gentle rock. Mountainous between lulls and soaring formations - like the tickling of lead guitar on "Between The Tides" transitioning into heavy strums - The Mapping doesn't sit in one place for long. This makes the album both easy to digest and fluid. It does, however, suffer from it's own sound trap.
Because the band floats along these hilly, wandering guitar-driven landscapes, some of the tracks don't hit hard enough. "Machines" and "Patience", for example, rank up more generic than others like "Footsteps" or the piano-led ending of "The Architect". Also not hitting hard are the lyrics; the album seeps with themes of young love and finding one's self, reading more like a standard journal entry than the bigger theme of second chances and life's inner struggles (hence the "Birth" and "Death", I think). It's underwhelming next to the album's respectable musicianship and professional upkeep, but at least they still have that.
Days Away, Inkwell, The Jealous Sound, Park, Meriwether, Rookie of the YearMyspace (http://www.myspace.com/loveandreverie) | Smartpunk (http://www.smartpunk.com/product.php?item_id=25604) | Lyrics (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=91614698&blogID=333810383)