Colour Revolt, The Cradle

This review isn’t so much about Colour Revolt insomuch as it’s about how much I dislike indie music. Listen, don’t get all defensive if you find indie music the second coming; all it means is that I have different tastes than you…and you have horrible taste in music. For the most part, I find indie music so forgettable.

If I wanted to be bored listening to a song, I would have put in a Lafayette Ronald Hubbard audiobook, watched a Stephen Hawking sex tape, or — even worse — watch True Grit again, either version. So it would have taken a Herculean effort for Colour Revolt to impress me, and I’ll shamefully admit that they kind of came close.

Colour Revolt’s history is pretty insane. Hailing out of Mississippi, the original members came together in high school and while recording their first EP, they ran into come technical difficulties by the name of Hurricane Katrina. Soon after getting back on track, they were signed to a subsidiary of Interscope Records, Tiny Evil, and toured with the likes of Dinosaur Jr., Explosions in the Sky, and Manchester Orchestra. Members came and went until they ended up recording their sorphomore full-length album, The Cradle, on Dualtone Records, with former members of Norma Jean and The Whigs.

Listening to The Cradle, I was fully expecting ten tracks of monotonous bland-drone, and I’m not going to say that it didn’t have its midtempo repetitve moments, such as “Our Names,” but then there were songs like “Heartbeat” and opener “8 years” that really caught my attention. Singer Jesse Coppenbarger has a wistful, errant-yet-engaging vocal style that at times can unpredictably hop along a track, keeping you guessing to how he’s melodically and rhythmically going to deconstruct a song. I hadn’t heard such an original stylistic vocal approach since I discovered Max Bemis of Say Anything, with his half-sung/half-spoken, hipster/anti-hipster, musical theater anger-choke.

Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough of that, and on the songs where Jesse moved away from exploring this style of his, The Cradle tends to slip back into the minutiae of what I like least about indie music. Not to take anything away from these guys, which is what all music writers say after beating up on said guys for an entire review, but I did like the spirit of what they embody. I appreciate the lyrics and the autobiographical nature of songs.

I also admire how this band persevered through so much and continue to do what they love to do, how they love to do it, music critics be damned. And, of course, if indie happens to be your cup of tea, you just might love this smooth chai. I, however, strongly prefer coffee.

And I really dislike indie music.