Guff, Symphony of Voices

Guff has a remarkable ability to turn gold (well, okay, aluminum) into lead. On their album Symphony of Voices, they take every possible opportunity to screw themselves over in the studio. Their melodies are inoffensive, but between the arrangements and the studio processing, they turn them into something much worse. It’s not like this would be the Mona Lisa otherwise, but the production still doesn’t help matters.

The most irritating aspect is the way the band uses effects. It’s like they set themselves a goal of using every bad ’70s and ’80s studio effect they could possibly find. On “Symphony of Voices,” they use an effect that’s frighteningly close to the vocoder on Frampton Comes Alive. Worse still, on several of their bridges they suddenly make the vocals sound far away, and it’s so over-the-top you it makes you want to laugh (until the third or fourth time they do it, when you want to cry).

The processing you might be able to blame on their producers, but the band has to be held responsible for their arrangements. The members of Guff are the masters of the strange bridge. During the rest of each song, they’re able to restrain themselves, but for some reason they lose their minds during the bridges. On “Saving the World,” the bridge goes from standard up-tempo rock to a half-tempo power ballad with this heavily tremolo-ed synth part, which has such a strange sound that you want to laugh. And they manage to screw up the choruses of most of the other songs here. It’s amazing how 20 to 30 seconds of sheer crap can ruin an otherwise bland-but-not-awful song.

Guff undoubtedly doesn’t care. They’re playing on the Warped tour this summer, which will erase any lingering shreds of self-doubt about their albums. And anyway, Guff sounds like they’re in it for money and girls rather than for art. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that they use novelty so well to hide the fact that their songs are boring.