Southfourth
Revolution (Photon)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2002

Southfourth has all the earmarks of a group who got together in college because each of its members wanted to be in a band and took the first opportunity to play with others. None of them ever quite found what they were really looking for until they’d been together too long to quit over something as silly as not being very good, so they kept at it out of a sense of loyalty and a fear that cutting their losses would mean admitting that their time spent together was mere wheel-spinning. That’s what Revolution sounds like to me. The only other alternative is that this wan acoustic piffle is their vision for pop music. For their sake, and for ours, I hope it’s the former explanation.

Though mostly circumstantial, there is evidence to support my theory, which hinges primarily on the seeming lack of worthwhile interaction between any of the band members throughout Revolution. Robert Fischer’s acoustic guitar skips along at a pace brisk enough to disguise the fact that he’s not doing anything, while drummer Birt Michaels seems to be off playing his own thing as if that’s the only way he’ll amuse himself, providing mildly complicated beats and fills that fail to support, or be supported by, the songs. The presumptive attraction of the band is therefore singer AnnMarie Bugler, who displays all the personality of an awards-show seat-filler. Her voice is continually subjected to unnecessary and unhelpful double-tracking, possibly in an attempt to hide what it ultimately cannot, which is that Bugler sounds like Courtney Love switching to petulant and fey acoustic-rock without acquiring a better relation to pitch. There is a moment, when she melismatically sings the title of the closing “In My Own World,” when her vocals actually made me physically wince. When my own body starts involuntarily trying to shake off an album, I’m afraid I’ve got no choice but to obey.

Back to reviews