The Photo Atlas - To Silently Provoke The Ghost
Rating
RIYL
At The Drive InThe Faint
Mewithoutyou
Hot Hot Heat
Release Date
04/21/2009
Label
Morning After RecordsTracklist
1.Class of 20122.It’s Always About The Money
3.Jealous Teeth
4.Paper Trail
5.You Haven’t Read Enough
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Dance infused indie punk. Sounds like one hell of a sweaty good time right? Usually it is, if it’s done well. For the past several years The Photo Atlas built quite a name for themselves playing this brand of music. With only an E.P. and one full-length on their résumé, they seem to be on-point. Their song "Red, Orange, Yellow" from their debut full length No, Not Me, Never, has been featured in video games such as Burnout Paradise, Burnout Dominator and MLB 07: The Show, and even received some radio play. Not bad for four guys from Denver. So with that being said, many have built up some anticipation for the release of their upcoming E.P., To Silently Provoke the Ghost.
The five track, nineteen minute long E.P. is crammed with an assortment of insistent dance beats, punk attitude and graceful indie rock cadence. Basically, if At The Drive In and Bloc Party had an unprotected drunken night together, nine months later would pop out To Silently Provoke the Ghost, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Actually, it’s kind of intriguing, but the uniqueness of that spawn seems to fall a bit short right from the start. The track that commences the E.P. is “Class of 2012”, and it is a bit bland for an opening track. Nothing too exciting happens throughout its brief existence: no ups, no downs, just a few spots of catchy guitar riffs. Picking up the pieces that “Class of 2012” had blatantly left behind is the next track “It’s Always About The Money”. This ensemble seems to have a little bit more of a fire lit under its ass with the help from some decent melodies, a hard driving pulse from the bass, and some hyper guitar work.
Okay, so that’s pretty much it. Oh wait… there’s three more tracks laid out for your listening pleasure, but don’t fret if there isn’t enough time in your day to bring yourself to listen to them. If you made it through the first two tracks, then for the most part you have already heard the rest of the album. Every song follows the same formula, which makes for a fairly boring listen. One positive aspect for To Silently Provoke the Ghost is that it’s well produced. Every instrument is arranged in a way that you can easily pick out what it’s doing and is topped off with crisp vocals.
All in all, To Silently Provoke the Ghost isn’t horrible, but it isn’t anything spectacular either. Perhaps this was just a warm-up for a full length they may have planned for the near future. For their sake I hope that’s the case because this attempt falls short of the mark its predecessors had left. The band definitely has some light at the end of their tunnel; it’s just a matter of them needing to reach their full potential, and they need to do it fast.
--Bill Lohr
Comments
Leeds, England
God-damn, I hate EPs. Just bring out another full length already. Loved their debut - It was like a dance-punk version of ATDI and insanely catchy. This.... well - it was just average and could've doen with a better production job, IMO.