Envelopes - Here Comes The Wind Album Review

Envelopes
Here Comes The Wind
Album Review

Maybe it's symbolic of how short our attention spans are becoming these days, or maybe it's the way that we consume entertainment and art at such a gratuitous, superficial level, but franco-swedish collective Envelopes just feel like a veritable Frankenstein's monster of inflences. Their press draws comparisons to Yo La Tengo, Sterolab and homespun scandie lunatics Bob Hund; all probably valid - although I hear The Sugarcubes, Belle and Sebastien, The Pixies - but as Here Comes The Wind proves there's a difference between being a precocious tossed salad of your inspirations and being just a coincidental byproduct of them.

This may sound (Indeed it reads) a little harsh, but irritatingly the world seems full of shouty minor-key girl/boy combos whose idea of rock and roll is mixing C86's shyness is nice aesthetic with bleeping midi patches only dogs can hear. In fairness nothing's particularly offensive - although I'm In Love And I Don't Care Who Knows It is as melodically twee as the title suggests - but other than the almost conventional garage rock of Life On The Beach and Audrey Pic's intriguing Bjork-strangles-Lavigne vocals on What's The Deal, Here Comes The Wind is mostly hot air.

Finally a word of warning: Love Shackers with expectations of hearing anything remotely like the fifties/eighties super camp chic of the B-52's (A comparison suggested by the band themselves) is trust me going to be almost totally nonplussed. Bummer.

2/5

Andy Peterson