Flickerstick - Tarantula
Rating
RIYL
Foo FightersAmerican Hi-Fi
Starsailor,
Dishwalla
Pink Floyd
Label
Idol RecordsTracklist
1. Catholic Scars & Chocolate Bars2. When You Were Young
3. Teenage Dope Fiend
4. Bleeding
5. Never Enough
6. The Tourist
7. Money & Dealers
8. Girls & Pills
9. All We Are Is Gone
10. Rain
11. Pistol In My Hand
12. The Ones
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Fame is a funny thing. It’s cruel. It’s fickle. One day you’re on television having your life documented, you’re a star, you have a big record contract, playing sold out shows across the country, the radio plays your songs; fame is your friend. What do you do when you wake up the next day and all those things are gone? Most would just simply pack it up and go back to whatever normal life there once was; Jobs, families, and responsibilities. “Having a couple videos played on television and a song on the radio is cool, but it didn’t work out, life goes on.” That’s the thinking of most bands. The logic is that you get your one shot at success in the music business and that’s it. Flickerstick has never been most bands. They refuse to go away quietly and three years after their Epic released album “Welcoming Home The Astronauts” inexplicably tanked, one of televisions first reality stars is back with the long awaited follow up called “Tarantula.”
Welcoming Home The Astronauts was a straight forward rock and roll album with hooks aplenty, dualing guitars and the thing that has always set Flickerstick apart from their contemporaries, singer Brandin Lea’s voice. The disc was very, very good, but it was missing something important: the passion and intensity of their live show. Now, on “Tarantula” the band has grown up. Without losing their pop edge, Flickerstick has turned darker, and edgier musically, exploring realms of rock and psychodelia that most bands are either afraid to touch, or simply do not have the ability to. Lyrically, Lea is more introspective and hopeful, talking about love and youth as well as the darker side of life and self in the track “Pistol.” The added lyrical depth helps add to the content.
The record can be divided into sub sections, or genres. The first two tracks “Catholic Scars and Chocolate Bars” and “When We Were Young” fit somewhere into pop rock genre. Power chords and sing along choruses make these two songs the most easily accessible songs on the record. After one listen they will be engrained into your memory. The simple chorus of “Catholic Scars, Chocolate Bars here we go again” combined with the hook of this song makes it the perfect choice for the lead single, unfortunately its not. This brings us to the second genre: The rock and roll songs, which includes the radio single of “Teenage Dope Fiend.” These handfuls of songs seem very formulaic and simple. There is no question that they rock out, but there is something about them that are missing. Teenage Dope Fiend for instance will have you rocking out in concert, but recorded, it lacks that certain intangible element that makes a song a “hit.” Finally we get to the third genre of the album, the guitar jams and this is where Flickerstick truly shines. On songs like “All We Are Is Gone” the band starts out the song as a simple guitar strummer with some ambient noise with Lea’s hauntingly beautiful voice rising a falling with the stings in the melody, but then something happens. The band comes alive. In the ensuing three minutes of the song you get a taste of what they are when they get on stage, stripped of recording equipment. The song draws you in enough to get comfortable and then builds into a soaring, electric guitar jam. But the record’s best song is the hauntingly painful “Pistol.” In its seven minutes you get guitar licks straight out of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” that builds into the searing, warning of “I’ve got a pistol in my hand, I’m making my stand…” The passion and emotional intensity of this song have you believe that this man is about to end it all. It is truly an emotionally draining song, one that will stay with you for some time to come.
“Tarantula” is not the perfect album by any stretch of the imagination. There are a couple of songs that I skip through each time around, but the rest will have you coming back for more. Will this album get Flickerstick back to the national spotlight that they once had? Probably not. Being on an indie label will not allow the promotion and distribution that a major label would, so it won’t get into as many hands as it should, but those who do get a hold of it will be hooked. Even so, Flickerstick has a made an album that most bands would be afraid to make. They put their blood, sweat and tears into something that is left of the mainstream, but it is still one of, if not the best release of the year.
JohnnyL
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