13 July 2010

The Leap Year - with a little push a pattern appears (2007, Hobbledehoy)

A long time ago, in 2000, Braving The Seabed released their only album and as they were from Perth, Australian too, they easily appeared as a little brother of Bluetile Lounge. At this point they were already tempted by a more dynamic / math-rock approach à la Seam / C-Clamp. I directly cherished them as another member of the scarce family of slow-core, among other promising Australian bands sharing similar features (Purplene, Rebel Astronauts, Light's Surprising Constancy, Sea Life Park).


But they were already disbanded when I discovered them and like the Australian branch of the family never took the time or the efforts to reach the sublimity of Bluetile Lounge's first album “Lowercase”.

In 2006, the key members of Braving The Seabed reappeared as Minor Ache for a short album titled “Black Hours Surround You”. Giving more focus towards dynamic and tense math-rock / (emo)core songs with melancholic vocals that recalled me of Bob Mould. But this project was posthumous too.

They are back now with a new short album and a new bassist as unique difference of line-up. Gone are the melodic math-rock explorations and their songs now are closer to the early nineties indie guitar rock noisy archetypes like Chavez, Juno, Sunny Day Real Estate, Archers of Loaf, Polvo, Sugar or Unwound. I'm doubtful about how much pertinency there is to explore such music in 2008 without bringing something new or developing some elements, the only fuel that I seem to detect is nostalgia.

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