Artist: We Are Bodies
Title: We Are Bodies
Genre: Pop-Rock
Release Date: 27th March 2015
Label: Membran Records
Album Review
It’s great sometimes how a band can come together. Take WE ARE BODIES who describe their inception thus: “After mutually spying on each other through social media, the pair first met in 2010”. A truly modern affair then. The pair in question are Dave Pen, singer and musician with English electro-rock collectives ARCHIVE and BIRDPEN, and Robin Foster, a guitarist and composer based in France.
Things start well, the repetitive ‘Pressure Compressor’ a mass dance of cautiously euphoric robots, almost self-aware but only mechanically joyful. The title track has a similar disjointed feel, a melancholy shrug that “nothing will change”, that we are bodies but we behave like machines. Once the guitars kick in it flexes itself admirably and covers for the not-always impressive vocals. There’s prog-rock itching to get out on ‘Calling Out’, and it’s maybe the direction this concept-album-of-sorts wants to go. It’s certainly a song with an eye on the greats of this genre, while perhaps not having the ideas to truly let go.
On ‘Capsize’, the band really capture their essence, a barely stated menace merging with a weary resignation, repetition again used to good effect as it begins to hurtle to an inevitable climax. It’s thrilling stuff. There’s plenty of balance here too, the twinkling beauty of ‘Under The Sea’ at times hinting at the theme music to Bladerunner, all rainy neon and futuristic dreaming, before melting into the stunning ‘Guide Me Home’. There are moments when the focus is perhaps too vague. On ‘Knife’ for example, despite a snarly bass line underpinning it all, the melody is too weak, and the emotional edge of previous songs seems to have deserted them. ‘Fake Shelter’ shakes it all up again admirably though, and final song ‘Replicants’ begins as a yearning, questing whisper and heads fully for majestic and epic, which it achieves effortlessly. It’s the perfect album closer.
With a bit of trimming this could have been an excellent album, whereas it has to settle itself into the ‘almost there’ category. But squeezed down into a more manageable playlist, this is lively and inventive, mature and true to itself. And that’s not bad for two people who met by circling around each other in cyberspace before having to touch-down in disappointing real-life.
Tracklist
01. Pressure Compressor
02. We Are Bodies
03. Calling Out
04. Capsize
05. Shadows
06. A Light On
07. Under The Sea
08. Guide Me Home
09. War
10. Knife
11. Fake Shelter
12. Replicants
Line-up
Robin Foster
Dave Pen
Website
http://wearebodies.com / https://www.facebook.com/WEAREBODIESMUSIC
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
Sound: 8
Total: 7.5 / 10
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