Thing of the Day
Miranda, Onward Pilgrim, The Dwyers, Furya, and Collapse Under The Empire & Mooncake
August 3rd 2011
A whole batch of albums today: MIRANDA’s Italian no wave jaggedness,
ONWARD PILGRIM’s blending of classic North American alt.rock, the punk
pop energy of THE DWYERS, FURYA’s progressive technical metal and
the post-rock coming together of COLLAPSE UNDER THE EMPIRE &
MOONCAKE…
MIRANDA – Growing Heads Above The Roof
(From Scratch) - Kind of out there on their very own frenetic edge,
Miranda are a frantic new wave no wave this wave that wave three piece
from Italy. This is their third spiky punchy album, they’re a drum,
synth and bass player kind of operation, their songs are jagged,
pointy, edgy, intense, their sound is different, kind of crazed,
oblique, obtuse, and this latest album sounds like they’ve sprouted off
in yet another direction. Miranda are not the kind of band to settle in
one place for too long. They’ve been what at the peep show?
Miranda have an urgent sound, a busy sound, and infectiously fresh
sound, classic new wave otherness, sounds that are lurching here,
bouncing there, springing around at all kinds of angles, pecking at
heads, pointing at things... no wave incendiary pop. Dry, immediate,
demanding, always enjoyably good, never obvious, forever twitching,
fidgeting... excellent no wave new wave goodness…
www.mirandamiranda.it
www.fromscratch.it 
ONWARD
PILGRIM – Onward Pilgrim (self release) - Kentucky’s Onward Pilgrim have an instantly enjoyable
sound.They sound like a band from
the Southern states of America, they sound like they’ve soaked up that
heritage. They say they are sailing in a Mayflower of melodious chords and
riffs, a group of musical pilgrims. Their sound is a refined joy, a
more than healthy blend of forward-looking classic rock and alternative
pop. “A fanciful mélange of grooving pop and psychedelic rock and roll”
is how they put it The four of them can get a little jagged and a
touch experimental now and again, but most of the time Onward Pilgrim are
about an extremely pleasing blend of slightly alternative, mellow
sounding, psychedelic flavoured North American Southern-edged classic
rock. They’re easy on the ear, they pleasantly flow. More about class
than musical revolution, they’re just a very enjoyable
www.onwardpilgrim.com
www.reverbnation.com/onwardpilgrim
THE
DWYERS – Bowling With Jesus (Airiston) - Well, not really sure why
they’re Bowling With Jesus, but it is better than bowling for soup, we’ll
give ‘em that much, (hard not to be really). The Dwyers deal in standard
issue rough-edged gruff-voiced punk pop, with a touch of the Ramones
thrown in there for good measure. They do something you’ve heard a
thousand times before; their saving grace is the fact that they do it
with such blustery passionate commitment that it becomes hard not to
like them. Sounds like they’re a blast live, or at least if you’re a
member of the band – expect it would be a real blast playing as
part of The Dwyers. Not sure where Jesus fits in or what they’re on
about, and they really could be from anywhere on the planet - that
universal thing that is the distilled sound of modern day punk pop. So
many bands doing this and none of them are really up to Snuff are they?
The Dwyers could be from Finland or Orange County or one of them London
satellite towns, they could be from anywhere, it doesn’t really matter,
they do their energetic thing well enough. No real identity or anything
that makes them anything different to all the others, they do their
harmlessly catchy thing with committed energy, with passion, they
probably do it with a great big shit-eating smile on their collective
faces as they set about living the dream for fifteen back-of-the-van
minutes, nothing you haven’t heard before, hard not to enjoy their
committed energy though…
www.myspace.com/thedwyersmusic
www.facebook.com/thedwyersband
FURYU
- Cio Che Fanina Non Dice
(self release) – An instrumental album
(besides the occasional spoken word bit) than comes with a CD
booklet-sized graphic novel comic book thing, text in Italian so it
isn’t that
clear what they’re on about. The music is a guitar dominated mix of
tuneful, old school hard rock, and what you might term progressive
technical metal. Once again a lot of this sounds like very competent
musicians jamming at a sound check while they wait for the vocalist to
turn up, they’re certainly tight and technically good and it is a
pleasant enough listen, but nothing that massively different. Things
tend to stick at the same pace and revolve around the same moods and
the one guitar texture… I guess we’re talking Iron Maiden, late 70’s
Rush, a touch of funk metal bass playing now and again, bits of
instrumental Queensryche and such. All very easy on the ear, nothing
jagged or edgy, no jumping on grungy pedals or thrashing out or
anything else, just uncluttered old school technical metal-flavoured
guitar-driven hard rock instrumental tunes that gallop along in a
harmless enough manner.
More from www.furyu.it 
COLLAPSE
UNDER THE EMPIRE & MOONCAKE – Black Moon Empire (Oxide Tones) –
Five track split EP, two bands, one from Germany, the other, Mooncake,
from Russia. First track features both bands, the EP is completed by
two tracks from each of them. All five pieces are pretty much standard
issue, politely paced, radiant post-rock – the usual peaks and troughs,
the usual atmosphere and slowly moving filmscape dynamic and, if we’re
honest, its pretty difficult to tell one band from the other. The five
tracks here are very enjoyable, though you’ve heard virtually every moment
before: most of this is decent enough good quality Godspeed You
Black Explosions in the Sigur Ros Mogwai. A pleasant listen until the last
track from Mooncake where that far too clichéd standard issue post-rock
atmosphere build up just becomes far far too much like all the others
to take that seriously.
Black Moon Empire is an EP of pleasing enough,
soothing, instrumental post rock moves that you’ve probably all heard
before. Fair to say both bands do it all very well, not sure why all
these bands are happy to just sound the same though? Guess they’re
happy... www.oxide-tones.com
