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Hostage Calm

Hostage Calm

Written by: PP on 16/11/2010 15:09:32

No matter how open minded one tries to be, you simply cannot appreciate music of all kind no matter how much you try. For us music reviewers it's luckily a rare exception rather than the rule, but this happens to be the case with me and Hostage Calm, whose self-titled sophomore album has gotten rave reviews and crazy fan praise everywhere I look, but to me it just sounds like an amalgamation of a million genres that just doesn't work very well as a whole. You see, they're sort of an indie rock / punk rock hybrid. Sort of. They also mix in power pop, traditional pop, pop punk and all sorts of other styles, prompting cries of "oh my god it's so intelligent and twistingly quirky" (etc) from the fans, whereas all my ears are hearing are a few confused dudes who haven't really decided on where they want to go for musically or what they want to sound like. It's a bit similar to Minus The Bear, except without the focused experimentation and a constant feel that they know what they are doing.,

Granted, it's not terrible by any means. Just bland in every possible meaning of the word. The music is smooth and poppy, but still feels reasonably genuine and honest to avoid the low marks on our rating scale, but it just says so little through it's floaty, light production and constantly varying style. It's difficult to get into, though that isn't usually the problem with me nor is it here, it's just that Hostage Calm don't seem to offer any motivation for me to check out any more tracks of their music after the first few on this disc, hence the massive delay in this review. I've heard though that these guys used to play straight up melodic punk with shouty vocals on their debut - Saves The Day style on their early records - so I don't really know what happened in between. People are saying you have to listen to this record a lot to 'get it', but even after more than enough listening times, I guess I just don't 'get it'. You be the judge.

Download: A Mistrust Earned
For the fans of: Minus The Bear
Listen: Myspace

Release date 20.07.2010
Run For Cover Records