Ideally for a band, getting a song played in a commercial or during a TV show or film shouldn't merely be a means of putting money in its pockets. There's always the concurrent hope that people will be so moved, turned on, or at least intrigued by the song that they'll hunt down the tune and artist. We've all done it-- memorize a snatch of the lyrics and then either hit up Google or consult the sage minds who respond to queries at Yahoo! Answers (you might even find out how to drywall while you're at it).
The L.A.-based electro-rock act Great Northern (ironically a pretty Google-unfriendly moniker) make the kind of music that just happens to be perfect for selling things or setting scenes. Unsurprisingly, the band's first album performed both feats, placing songs in ads as well as on both the big and small screens-- "Low Is a Height" even soundtracked a couple of really awesome NBA commercials a year ago that utilized a split-screen gimmick to depict a pair of star hoopsters discussing the importance of the upcoming playoffs. The bad news is that as a roundball junkie I saw these commercials dozens of times, and yet not only was I never once inspired to track down the ad's tune, even listening to it now I can't place it in my memory in conjunction with that commercial. Meanwhile (and I know this is cheating since I already knew and loved the song), I remember somewhat embarrassingly getting a little choked up by the spot where Steve Nash was talking over Radiohead's "House of Cards" (ah, Stevie, will you ever get that ring?).
Great Northern's sophomore full-length, Remind Me Where the Light Is, should pick right up where the debut left off in terms of scoring network and celluloid placement, while failing to do much to actually compel people to find out just who composed those atmospheric soundscapes and gauzy melodies. The band's music is spot-on for soundtrack work precisely because it's moody yet unobtrusive, evocative of something, yet noncommittal enough to conceivably fit any emotional tableaux.
Thanks to vocalist Rachel Stolte, the album's more driving, insistent, and therefore most successful tracks, particularly "Houses", "Story", "Snakes", and "Mountain", approximate the sound of Madonna fronting a group of stylishly dark, beat-minded rockers from that mid-to-late 90s period when a patina of techno was seemingly de rigueur for would-be-hip MOR guitar acts. There are no shortage of nice touches in these songs-- "Mountains" is propelled by big, cascading drums while "Snakes" arrives on Flaming Lips-ish strings and rides an attractively loping, buzzy guitar line, yet all the major moves are pretty baldly telegraphed, and the results are eminently predictable if admittedly somewhat satisfying in their punchy loudness. The same can't be said for the tracks predominantly sung by co-principal Solon Bixler, which are more heavily distributed towards the back end of the record, and weigh it down perceptibly with purely flat dream-rock wallpaper, forgetting the saving grace of even the least interesting shoegaze band to at least crank up the damn volume. Great Northern may continue to be soundtrack heroes, but complementary aural scenery is likely all the group will ever be so long as its music can't do anything more significant than remind me how I sort of dug former Veruca Salt frontwoman Nina Gordon's first solo album.
