Review Summary: They call themselves "Swimgaze"
Just as their self-proclaimed genre description suggests, while listening to this bands debut, it really does feel as if you're being surrounded by water. Whether it's coming down in crashing torrents, or gently running along your feet, the watery atmosphere is ever-present with this album.
Skeleton Coast use an overabundance of effects on their guitars and vocals. Waves of reverb, phaser, and delay pedals completely morph the sound that comes from these instruments. It gives the otherwise rather thin vocals a wider sound like there are a thousand voices all around being drowned in these effects, and the guitars are made to compliment the soaring vocals by feeling as if they're spilling and splashing all over the place in the background, running into each other and everything around them, filling the spaces they are meant to in a very pleasing way. Not to say that they are pushed to the background of Skeleton Coast's sound. Quite often the guitars are performed in a very high register, with some nice stacatto picking and enticing hooks to keep the listener coming for more. And while the keyboards may be somewhat unnoticable at times, when they are present, they do contribute in an important way to the overall feeling of this album, really producing nostalgia in great amounts when they are heard.
The fact that the keys can be somewhat unnoticable brings us to another slight detractor, while the bass and drums are not lost in the mix of this album, it feels as if they're missing a certain technical interest that could really help this band take their game to the next level. The rhythm section does a good job of what they do in laying down a solid foundation for the guitars, vocals, and keyboards to play over and create the watery atmosphere that they do, but they can just feel a bit uninspired at times, like it's the same bassline and drumbeat again, just with a subtle variation. Some more training for this rhythm section could do wonders for this band.
However, I do have a counterpoint to my own arguement. While the bass and drums do feel a bit tame and repetitive in the studio, I did have the chance to see Skeleton Coast live a few months before they released their debut, and the rhythm section (as well as the rest of the band) seemed a lot more comfortable to play out and get a little bit wild with their performance. It just made everything that much more intense, both the highs and lows. It could be that this band is just a little bit tentative in the studio, knowing that this is their first outing, and without the expert use of effect treatment that the lead instruments get, the bass and drums appear even more subdued by comparison. But with more time on the road, and some solid experience as musicians and songwriters under their belts, they could have the ability to burst out of their shell in the recoding studio, and produce an even more satisfying album on the next go around.
While Skeleton Coast do an excellent job of creating an atmosphere on this album, and have good songwriting abilities to boot, some slight apprehensiveness in the studio keep this band's debut from living up to its full potential.
