Machine Meets Land, Forgot About the Whistle Industry

The music on Forgot About the Whistle Industry starts promisingly, with distant, Radiohead-ish guitar and funky drums, but man, when guitarist/vocalist Jeremy Vanecek starts singing…it’s all downhill from there. It’s not the voice, mind you, but the words Vanecek’s singing that make me cringe — the lyrics for lead-in track “Shot,” for example, ramble repetitively about how somebody named Katie is so beautiful and wants a shot and the singer doesn’t know how Katie feels about him. Similarly, “Meat” is about how some unnamed woman is going to keep the meat red while the singer rocks. Sing about how she keeps the meat and brings the flesh, then repeat ’til the song ends.

And that’s basically how Forgot About the Whistle Industry goes, all the way through: lackluster lyrics, repeated ad infinitum. Which is a shame, because the music isn’t bad, really. It’s fairly standard late-’90s indie-rock, with drifting guitars, solid drums, and Pixies-esque melodies, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Paired with lyrics about how the vocalist is already dating the subject of the song in his head (which I’m guessing is not what most girls want to hear from a guy they’re not actually in a relationship with), though, and the whole thing sinks.

After listening all the way through Forgot, Machine Meets Land makes me think of a college-age band of enthusiastic friends that’s got some good musical ideas but needs to step back and take a long, hard look at the lyrical side of things. ‘Til they do, this one’s not going to cut it for me, sorry.