There’s not a lot I can tell you about Watsonville Patio, as
\nneither their personal website or the website of their record label
\nhave any information worth the pixels to display it. Thankfully, I
\ndon’t have to. It’s enough you know California-based Watsonville
\nPatio has released their third CD,
\nPopulation 02<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The band has an interesting sound. Imagine, if you will, 10,000
\nManiacs where Stevie Nicks had succeeded Natalie Merchant, and
\nyou’d be close; it’s a very folksy, comfortable sound, like a faded
\nflannel shirt or an easy chair you’ve managed to wear the
\nproperly-shaped depression in. The sound washes over you, easy,
\ndigestible, not terribly challenging.<\/p>\n
Watsonville Patio has built up its fan base by touring, and it
\nshows; their music is seemingly designed to be performed live,
\nguitar-heavy without too many frills or fripperies. The
\nmusicianship is competent, but nothing reaches out and smacks you
\nwith its concentrated greatness.<\/p>\n
Indeed, it’s hard to get smacked by anything at all on
\nPopulation 02<\/i>. The band’s sound becomes homogenous to the
\npoint of hypnosis. There are some standout tracks – “Perfect
\nCombination” is an intent, minor-keyed rocker that sounds like REM
\ncrossed with the Cowboy Junkies; “First Stop Tucson” is a country
\nstomper that manages to sound bright and distinctive; and the
\nharmonica-laced “Changed Your Mind” has a good beat and a coherent,
\nstrong sound.<\/p>\n
Sadly, though, most of
\nPopulation 02<\/i>‘s sound disappears into either a morass of
\nsameness, a funhouse mirror of sensitive indie female vocals, or,
\nworse, ends up sounding like a Fleetwood Mac tribute band. I’m
\nprobably being a little unfair to lead vocalist Janice Grube –
\nafter all, unlike Ms. Nicks, she can pronounce the English language
\n– but damn, it’s eerie how much she sounds like the High Priestess
\nOf Overproduced Arena Rock. Not even a cover of Van Morrison’s
\n“Into The Mystic”, otherwise well performed and arranged, manages
\nto dispel the ghost of Stevie.<\/p>\n
I don’t mean it to sound like I thought
\nPopulation 02<\/i> was bad, because it’s not. There’s just
\nnothing notable to separate it from a hundred other albums of
\nsimilar genre and theme – and in today’s wide open music scene,
\nflat competence isn’t quite enough. There are a lot of people out
\nthere who swear by Watsonville Patio’s sound – what web resources
\non the band I could find involved their passionate, devoted fan
\nbase. (Cool, maybe I’ll get more hate mail. It’s been a while.) I
\ndon’t question that they couldn’t become a distinctive, talented,
\nunique-sounding band and produce a classic CD. Unfortunately, no
\nmatter how much you want it to be so,
\nPopulation 02<\/i> isn’t it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":25615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6452],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36821","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-watsonville-patio","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36821"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36821"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}