Out of the Shadow
Responsive Recordings / Sub Pop
2004
Rating: 8 bald vultures out of 10
There’s a certain type of sound captured in the music of Rogue Wave that I’m having a really hard time wrapping my vocabulary around. My best effort would be to say that a lot of their songs remind me of some early to mid-nineties radio pop – Buffalo Tom, Teenage Fanclub, Gin Blossoms, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Dillon Fence, The Connells – but I don’t think that really does the band justice. They certainly don’t sound like a throwback to that era, yet they seem to capture a similar mood in their music and a knack for same type of pop sensibilities. There’s even a certain element to their music that reminds me of eighties stalwarts like R.E.M. and later, non-punk Replacements, but I’m afraid that pigeon-holes their sound too much too. Occasionally, their rhythm section follows odd time signatures not unlike a mellower version of Thingy or Heavy Vegetable, and some of the more upbeat tracks remind me of Elliott Smith’s side project Heatmiser.
The bottom line – I’ve been listening to this record for over a month now, and I’m still really enjoying it. It seems like that’s been harder and harder to say over the last couple of years – I hear a lot of bands I enjoy for a couple of weeks, and then I file their CD away and forget all about them. I think it’s the same intangible quality that makes Rogue Wave hard to describe, that also makes them interesting to listen to. Sometimes I get the notion that the best bands are those whose influences you can’t really pin point exactly, and this is one of them. This is great first release, and I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes open for more out of them in the future.
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