The Color Industry - Quotidian

I'm not going to pretend that I'm not good friends with the two members of this band. I mean, it would be pretty conspicuous to say I'm done doing music reviews and then just pick a random local group to come out of retirement for. So yeah, I know these guys. I also think they make good music. They describe themselves as making lo-fi noise pop, which is a better description than I could probably come up with. One of the reasons it's hard to pin down their sound is that they don't really have one, exactly. I mean, you can tell from one song to the next that it's the same people, but they try a lot of different things and come up with a lot of different results. No two tracks really feel terribly similar, certainly not as close as two tracks on an average album by a modern band.

Skip to a random song and you might hear something that could have been made by a shoegaze act in the early 90s, or an early 00s punk single, or something that maybe only The Color Industry could make. It might make the whole album seem a bit schizophrenic, but as the first collection of songs by a group figuring out what they want to do, I think it's pretty darn good. The first half is very entertaining, and while I think the second drags a bit in comparison, there's still some very interesting ideas and experimentation to check out. I really like the mix of acoustic and electric guitars throughout, and the use of feedback and other little tricks is always intriguing as well. My favorite tracks are "Oxytocin", "Thoughts", "Elroy", and "Tale", though you should really find your own by listening to the album here. Stream it, download it, read the lyrics, whatever. It's all free, they just want their music to be heard, and I think it deserves to be.