The thing that I enjoy most about reviewing independent artists
\nis that the ones that stick in your ears have so damn much
\nenthusiasm for their music. A big-dollar professional producer can
\n— and has — made talentless singers sound like (be?)
\nGrammy-winners. All that’s missing is\u2026 Heart. Passion.
\nSincerity.<\/p>\n
When you’re working closer to the ground, those intangibles are
\nwhat it’s all about, and Raleigh, North Carolina’s Pico vs. Island
\nTrees — yep, they named their band after a court case, silly
\ncollege boys — give these songs everything they’ve got and then
\nsome.<\/p>\n
Pico’s sound is college-coffeehouse jammy-sloppy jazz-pop-folk.
\nThe guitars (by Chris Karlsson and Jeremy Bullock) are mostly
\neither acoustic or soft, restrained electric, and the vocals and
\ndrums (Bryan Carter, doubling as drummer and lead singer\/lyricist)
\nare miked for that loose, live-in-the-living-room sound. The one
\ntime the band gets heavier is when former Ben Folds Fiver Robert
\nSledge stops in to lend his fat fuzz-toned bass to the Dave
\nMatthews-ish “Six Up.”<\/p>\n
The group’s lyrics often delve into college-romance
\nlove-lessons-learned land, but steer clear of clich\u00e9s.
\nInstead, Carter hits you with flashes of stream-of-consciousness
\nbrilliance like: “It’s the stupid promises we make \/ That lead us
\nto our great mistakes \/ And we can’t take them back \/ No you won’t
\ntake me back \/ I want you back.” As earnest as some of these cuts
\nare, they’re consistently artful as well, suggesting Carter may
\njust get better and better.<\/p>\n
Getting to specifics, there’s a sensitive-boy sweetness to the
\nabove-quoted “Autumn,” a beautifully paced breakup song that
\ngradually builds up to a powerful release and finish. I also loved
\nthe strings on “Lost,” the insightful poetry of “Broken,” and the
\ngenuine sense of loss conveyed in the appropriately ragged lament
\n“Consolation.”<\/p>\n
Not that everything on Basement-tapes touches like the endearingly sloppy handclaps on
\nJust Wait<\/i> is all serious-like, though; the Picos also cut
\nloose with a goofy wit on tracks like “Mother of Pearl,” which
\noffers a trance-y two-and-a-half minute chant followed by an
\nafterthought verse that punchlines with this nugget: “Necessity is
\nthe mother of invention \/ But she done gave that baby away.”
\nLOL\u2026
\nnice<\/i>. “Brand New Set Of Wings” is another cut with enough
\nsweetness and silliness to charm the pants off any number of
\n
\n“Saying The Opposite” only reinforce the sense that this is a
\nyoung, enthusiastic band that just wants to play. No popstar
\nwannabes here; just musicians who believe in their art. And now I
\ndo, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":26642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6992],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37890","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-pico-vs-island-trees","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37890","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37890"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}