Artist: The Bewitched Hands
Title: Birds & Drums
Genre: Pop / Folk / Surf Rock / Shoegaze
Release Date: 19th November 2010
Label: Sony Music
Album Review
THE BEWITCHED HANDS, a French sextet (five men and one woman, of untraceable details of line-up) from Reims came from different projects to recreate themselves in another band where they could have fun with their musical ideas. Their enthusiasm soon meant they took it more seriously and released a single ‘Hard To Cry’ heralding ‘Birds & Drums’ album. Their full band title is THE BEWITCHED HANDS ON TOP OF OUR HEADS, it’s ridiculously long, apparently they wanted to cover that there’s many of them in the band, maybe also to play on the scene from the film ‘Ju-on’ aka ‘The Curse’. They seem to think that their music is bewitching! They also capitalise and de-capitalise the name here and there to appear artistic but it misses the point and conveys very little relevance.
The approach is superficially varied and marked by all of the six taking part in singing, which gives it the Folk feel that it overlaps all the other they press in - the Pop catchiness, the spaced out Shoegaze, Surf Rock to name the most prominent ones. They convey emotions in a lukewarm way, which makes me laugh out hard at statements of some reviewers such as “Now this is very hard to achieve, we are flirting here with the level of Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’!” (François Ducray). KURT COBAIN is spinning with a high speed in his grave!!! Sure, I can hear the appeal they have for the class of ‘61 cocooned in the most remote place lost in time and space who never heard of Hard Rock, let alone Grunge, to make such a preposterous comparison. Maybe if he meant that the band sounds as THE BEACH BOYS swallowing lithium and tear gas, then he could have had a point.
Even when they try to sound as JIMI HENDRIX in ‘2 4 GET’ the result is very poor and amateurish. Their vocals are as unremarkable and boring as the instrumentation. They make you feel that the yardstick for singing is like a reversed Punk without the energy to question anything, they are half dead. Not only the moods created are cold to tepid, the pseudo-sentimentalist approach spoils the rest as well. A retro band for my grandmother and these days she would even have a better choice than this. ‘Birds & Drums’ is amongst the worst albums I’ve ever heard.
Tracklist
01. Happy With You – 3.28
02. Birds & Drums – 2.28
03. Underwear – 2.33
04. So Cool – 2.28
05. Cold – 1.52
06. Work – 2.30
07. Hard To Cry (Album version) – 5.20
08. Out Of Myself – 1.24
09. King’s Crown – 2.54
10. 2 4 GET – 2.33
11. Staying Around – 4.08
12. Sea – 3.40
13. Sahara Dream – 4.40
Websites
http://www.myspace.com/handsbewitched / http://www.facebook.com/thebewitchedhands
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 2
Sound: 3
Total: 2.5 / 10
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