The hook on "Cinematic" might be the strongest one on Silver Storms, and also one of the most lyrically problematic. To wit: "Say something cinematic/ Or become a tragic figure/ Who never, never, never says nothing to remember." It could very well be indicative of a "go hard or go home" ethos the A-Sides took into making their Vagrant debut. But taken in context, it's one of the moments that make too many assumptions based on "epic" signifiers. For bands like this, Explosions In the Sky have become a sworn enemy. Though films may have once leaned on the sort of fey and fussy orch-pop this Philly outfit traffics in here, why deal with the middlemen of tepid melodies and iffy lyrics when those twinkly, heart-tugging guitar peals will do just fine on their own?
Silver Storms is the latest in a recurring recent phenomenon amongst landlocked American bands coming up on boutique-style labels; though preferable to the literary aspirations of White Whale or the hysterical Jeff Buckley corpse-fucking of As Tall as Lions, Silver Storms practices in a similar all-cart no-horses, vaguely UK-circa-2000 sonic sense, asking producer Brian McTear (Mazarin, Matt Pond PA) to super-size it every time without seeing if they have the stomachs. In politics, they call it "throwing money at the problem."
After a short intro of canned strings, the phased guitars on "Always In Trouble" sparkle and fade like a Windows screensaver while the drums get a stately treatment of reverb, and it's all simultaneously pleasant and moderately ambitious like a Doves deep cut. It's also the most egregious example of what's wrong here: six minutes of a plateaued melody that hardly deserves three. If I wasn't looking at a hard copy of this record, I'd swear that Silver Storms was sequenced backwards; the first half is filled with deceptively long-winded snoozers (have they forgotten what their name means?) that tack on codas that don't feel so much unnatural as they do unearned or unnecessary.
Ironically, side B contains the more instantly appealing moments, like the soaring chorus of "Great American Novelist". While never really being full-on genre experiments, Silver Storms is more relatively successful when the A-Sides diverge from their standard indulgences, as with the sock hop strum of "A Florida Grove" and the c&w leanings of "My Heroes Have Always Been Crazy".
And yet, the golden slide-guitar outro rings far more true than the lyrical thrust. Singer Jon Barthmus wonders where he fits into a lineage of unnamed, self-destructive idols, but coming from someone who prefers to sound like he idolizes the Stills, it's akin to that "Back Door Man"-to-"Back That Azz Up" speech in Hustle & Flow-- certainly heartfelt but also patently ridiculous when you consider its source.
