My inbox does get much love from anyone other than spammers, so I was pleasently suprised when I recevied an email from Lemming, a band from
Zanesville, Ohio. In the email they mentioned that their album could be downloaded for free on last.fm. I thought I would take them up on the offer and give it a listen.
Dandelion has a real DIY feel to it, as if it was recorded in someone’s garage. I’m not sure if it’s just the crappy quality mp3s but it really suits the songs. I know many people like their albums to sound clean and polished. Unfortunatly, if your one of them, you’ll hate this record.
Lemming are a band that wear their influences on their sleeves. The band’s Pixies influence can be heard from the opening track Untitled, a fairly mellow track which mixes male and female vocals with fuzzed out guitars and Imperfect sounds like it could be a Nirvana track with its slighly out of tune vocals and distorted guitars. Selfish is quite a different track from the others, possibly because of the use of acoustic guitar at the start and the tempo changes that seem quite abrupt. The vocals, however, are not quite stong enough to pull a slower song off.
The problem with this album is that most of the songs blend into eachother. It’s not they they are band songs, but after hearing 10 tracks of the same thing it becomes almost impossible to distinguish them all.
The band do have a couple of slower songs, which make a nice change from all the distortion. Slowly Going Numb is the standout track of the album, that for some reason reminds me of early Jebediah.
The title track Dandelions, is also a standout track and is a much poppier song, in the vein of The Lemonheads. Goat song, despite the strange title is also one of the poppier tracks.
Dandelions is certainly an album for fans of band like Sonic Youth and The Pixies. It lacks consistancy at times and the songs can blend into each other. However, it is quite a good listen if you’re in the right mood.
Three stars.
Lemming-Slowly Going Numb.mp3
