NEW CD's / Jada Morning - City Synthetic (2005) (item no.: 266)

Label: selfreleased
Released: 2005

Echoing guitars and spacey washes of feedback. The atmosphere of The Cure with a post-punk esthetic of early Sonic Youth.

This San Francisco foursome creates dark, brooding, atmospheric music that hovers somewhere on the respectable side of the emo/post-rock continuum. These songs build slowly, establishing mood in long instrumental introductions, with one electric guitar carving great melancholy arcs and pensive melodies over the other's cloudy rhythms. The drums are tribally heavy, yet mixed low enough to rumble and snap in the distance, and underneath it all, subtle punctuations of bass emerge and disappear. The vocals, when they come -- usually a minute or so into these protracted cuts -- are earnest, even strident, aiming for anthemic transcendence but often falling short into melodrama. The best cuts -- "In Ribbons", "Headlights Surround" and "City Synthetic" -- reverberate with The Cure's dark melancholy, creating ornate soundscapes of shifting instrumental sound.

Reviewed by Jennifer Kelly - splendidezine.com