Album Details

• Artist: The Submarines
• Album: Love Notes/letter Bombs
• Label:
• Year of Release: 2011
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: MusicCritic on 2011-04-06

Los Angeles band The Submarines suffer in comparison to their Brooklyn-based counterparts, Matt & Kim. Both bands are made up of one man and one woman. Both play percussion-heavy, hand-clap-littered, shout-y indie pop. Both have the earnestness and zeal of an eight-year-old that’s just gotten his first drum kit. Matt & Kim’s Grand shows how well this formula can work. The Submarines’ Love Notes/Letter Bombs shows how easily it can backfire.

Which is not to say Love Notes isn’t frequently good – ‘Shoelace,’ ‘Ivaloo,’ ‘Birds’ and ‘Plans,’ are worth a listen. It just seems like every other song on the album falters under the weight of gimmicky production. A lemon shaker here, a glockenspiel there. Echoes, fade-ins, verse trades, fuzzy bass lines. What seem like hundreds of different guitar, vocal and percussion elements in the space of a single song. More often than not, it feels less like music than it does a cutesy assault on your ears. Lyrics like “Did I break your open heart? After ten years together, we’re still ten years apart” don’t help matters any.

Singer Blake Hazard has a pleasant voice – she bears a strong vocal resemblance to the Cardigans’ Nina Persson – and when the band dials things down a bit, as they do on the closing track ‘Anymore,’ the effect is lovely. When they go full-speed ahead, however, as they do on ‘The Sun Shines at Night’ and ‘Fire from Love Notes,’ the effect can be slightly dizzying. And dizziness can lead to nausea.

Kevin Hartford

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