Review Summary: A great debut.
Milford, Pennsylvania is hardly known for it's music scene. In fact, its essentially nonexistent. Apart from a couple of awful metalcore bands that fizzled out before they could become relevant, and Vanessa Carlton - you know, that girl who wrote that early 2000's smash hit 'A Thousand Miles.' Due south you have the suburb of Doylestown, which is the birthplace of legendary alternative act
Circa Survive and its protopunk sibling,
Balance and Composure. Due north you have Scranton, which is the hometown of Emo colossus
Tigers Jaw. You couldn't find Milford on a map let alone hear about a new, obscure musical act with a name just as mysterious as its music.
Enter Statue, a four piece Alt-Rock group consisting of lead guitarist and singer Jared Feldman, drummer Lucas Driscoll, bassist John D'Auria and their newest addition John Van Vynck taking up secondary guitar duties. At a glance, Statue seems like your typical angst-ridden teenage rock band. But when you hear them, its a surprising experience. With a frontman who's just barely over five feet tall, he's much more than meets the eye. Jared Feldman is a triple threat songwriter, near virtuoso guitarist and an incredible tenor with an elastic vocal range reminiscent of the late Jeff Buckley, and a dirty vocal style which sounds oddly like a lower-voiced Anthony Green. Which shouldn't surprise you, because he idolizes both of them. Pair him with a amazingly tight rhythm section and they become an unstoppable tour de force.
They dropped their first official release yesterday, which is a two track EP aptly titled 'Convoluted Concepts.'
It features the passive-aggressive and climactic 'Shutter Speed' and the chaotic four and a half minute masterpiece titled 'Forever Falling.'
Jared's lyricism really shines on these two tracks, leaving the convoluted (ha!) metaphors and pretentious periphrastic style of traditional hardcore acts at the door. He goes for straightforward, in your face lyrics. Its not pretty, its not nice, its just plain raw.
Instrumentally these two tracks showcases the band's experience and versatility, featuring inventive song structures and technical prowess that impresses you, but doesn't go too over the top. From the soothing vocal melodies on Shutter Speed to the powerful, operatic yells on Forever Falling - not to mention a riff that you can absolutely go nuts to.
However, this great release is not without it's faults:
The song structures - while inventive - are a little hard to keep up with sometimes,
and Jared's voice is kind of buried in the mix at points - so it's hard to decipher what he's saying at times.
Overall, a great debut.
You can download Convoluted Concepts for free here:
http://statuebandpa.bandcamp.com/releases
