header: Reviews

Reviews for [RL113]
Soda Lilies "Love Cemetery Tapes"




  • Lost In a Sea of Sound
    Songs strung out with an almost de-tuned quality. Soda Lilies captures a modern charm, creating static filled pop with heavy tones of a late night affair. Sounds fall thick, like time has destroyed the magnetic tape, wobbling in and out of clarity. The energy of Love Cemetery Tapes burned so deeply, no matter how old, the cassette spools still spin. A composition that makes you think about how creative musicians are today. Love Cemetery Tapes takes eight tracks to the grave. Vibrancy of sounds compressed in times crypts and smashed apart to spill on new listeners ears. Like the band Flipper crossed with Jesus and the Mary Chain, there is an enthusiasm heralding to pioneering new genres. Guitar strings loose and buzzing on the frets, raw drums driving sense and reason, making the entire project move through ghostly light. The soft styled vocals almost whispering as to not stir the spirits of the past. If you have read many of the posts on this site, my bias is towards the longest track "The Bees In My Stomach Are Dead And Getting Used To It". The only track without vocals, droning instruments taking on there own decaying form. Like really good fiction, hard to tell if this brand new or if Love Cemetery Tapes was found in buried in a thirty year old box of tapes.



  • Raised By Gypsies
    Somewhere between the lines of Smashing Pumpkins and Silversun Pickups is the sound of Soda Lilies. Through fuzzy guitars come vocals hidden somewhere and in a way which most other artists do not use. Most vocals are right out there in the front for all to hear and Soda Lilies sort of tucks them away so you have to pay extra close attention to hear them. While I would say that the songs with vocals have a pretty decent spread but still remain more music than they are words coming out, the cassette eventually takes a detour into all instrumental bits and it just feels like you're dropping off the edge of a cliff into a distorted canyon. Clearly a fitting end to where this takes us. I also feel like I must note that through the static and vocals at one point there is this part where it sounds like the cassette is breaking, almost like the way a hip hop emcee would let the beat skip, and I know it's not the particular copy of the cassette I have because it happens on both sides (this program repeats on both sides) It's little touches like that which bring out the Andy Kaufman fan in me and have me loving this one that much more.