Welsh Rabbit, Forward Motion

I’ve started playing this game where I try to guess whether a band is together because its members all shared some sort of common musical vision or because playing with other people is fun, so why not? System Of A Down, for instance, I’d place in the former category, while Audioslave clearly fits the latter (but that’s probably a gimme). Welsh Rabbit is another apparent marriage of convenience; their Forward Motion seems so perfunctory that it’d be tough to convince me that the band felt like it was onto something special. The songs are almost the textbook definition of nondescript indie, of the sort plied by a thousand bands who toiled away on the college scene in the 1980s, all sung in a characterless voice that’s mostly on pitch (the first verse of “Last Line” is pretty rough, though) but demonstrates no real reason to be heard other than the fact that it’s the least objectionable of the available options, or maybe it just belongs to the songwriter. “Breakup #2” is an enervated jangle-pop number with a bit of buzz, “Reflection Of The Three” is a stupid shuffle without any sort of momentum, and there was a point during “Mai Tai” where I forgot I was listening to a song. “Both Sides,” meanwhile, sounds like the band heard that there was a New Wave revival going on and figured that they’d jump in without really giving it much thought. That seems to sum up Forward Motion, really. It’s bland, unnecessary and oddly businesslike. That’s not Welsh Rabbit’s fault, really; its members just haven’t found the proper combination of people to play with. That sucks, but it’s the reality for such a vast majority of people who ever play music with others that it would be foolish to pretend to be shocked when you realize that it’s not working. The trick is to keep from insisting that it is.