Sprawl
Sarah Veladora (self-released)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Space City Rock, Winter 2005

Sprawl is a band that sounds great, with impeccable musicianship used in the service of creating a diamond-hard, anthemic power-pop surface on top of songs that pretty much go nowhere. You can spend your time listening to Sarah Veladora picking out not just the band’s influences but who they are actively imitating: the guitar at the start of the opening “Bad Girl” comes direct from the first Cars album, “Faded” sounds like Fountains of Wayne covering the Flaming Lips, little stabs of Oasis pop up now and then (and particularly in “Purposeful and Clean”) and singer Ralph Kircher comes off like a cross between Robyn Hitchcock and an especially drawly Liam Gallagher, with a few Thom Yorke-y screams dropped into “Feed Your Angel” for good measure. If I imagine that Sarah Veladora is on the Not Lame label instead of being self-released, I somehow manage to convince myself that it sounds vaguely psychedelic, particularly during the closing “Allright.” But all the above is the result of my making an effort to make Sprawl interesting, which should be their job, not mine. The only real thought that went through my mind while Sarah Veladora played was, “Yep, I sure am listening to something. This is an album, all right.” Your ears deserve better.

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