{"id":41011,"date":"2008-07-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/sky-full-of-messages\/"},"modified":"2008-07-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-18T00:00:00","slug":"sky-full-of-messages","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/sky-full-of-messages\/","title":{"rendered":"Sky Full Of Messages"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m always one for soulful singer-songwriters, the kind who craft lyrics that lit geeks adore. But sometimes, I want an album that doesn\u2019t need puzzling over; an album that just begs for the speakers to be turned up; basically, an album that rocks. <\/i><\/o:p><\/p>\n

Sky Full Of Messages, <\/i>the latest from New York City-based Victor Bravo (the group released their debut EP, Shut Out The Sky, <\/i>in 2006) is one of those discs that\u2019s all the better for its rough edges. Furious slashes of guitars (courtesy of singer\/guitarist Collin Frendz) crash past Dan Collins\u2019 equally unhinged drum stylings, creating a raw, intoxicatingly messy sound that at its best recalls Mudhoney, Iggy Pop, and Nirvana. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Opener \u201cDrain On Me\u201d starts out with a sweetly melodic snippet of guitar \u2013 which lasts all of ten seconds before the drums kick in and all hell breaks loose. The lyrics are simple but effectively punky (although they are a little hard to make out over the sheer sonic storm of guitars — not that Kurt Cobain\u2019s or Iggy Pop\u2019s wailings were ever particularly coherent). Still, it\u2019s not too tough to get the gist of this aggressively energetic track: it\u2019s a nice little fuck-you to everything that \u201csucks me dry,\u201d whether it\u2019s, as their website says, \u201cParents, partners, politicos, and all the various forces of darkness.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The full force of this disc is maintained throughout the twenty minute runtime. \u201cKick You Out\u201d is a short and not so sweet, a little repetitive lyrically but burning with a brutal power, while \u201cMake My Escape\u201d plays it harder and faster, ratcheting the drumming up to warp-speed, while Frendz\u2019s voice — an escalating, raw, echoing wail — is pure insanity here, albeit in an entirely entertaining way. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

My only complaint is that it\u2019s all a bit of a sonic blur. Individually, each song is powerful and strangely catchy, but placed back-to-back, they become tougher to differentiate. Which is why a song like closer \u201cLong Face,\u201d which takes a more slow-burning approach, is all the more memorable. It loses none of its raucousness, but there\u2019s a sense of ominousness here that really shows what Victor Bravo can do when they mix it up. The guitars are brooding, Frendz\u2019s vocals are sharper, terser, and the lyrics too are jagged, with all sorts of unexpected line breaks that add to the uneasy feeling: \u201cSat down and \/ Tried to write my \/ Novel I \/ Think I will \/ Start stopping, the writing \/ I\u2019m stopping the writing.\u201d It\u2019s a song that gets better with each listen and the sheer weirdness of it leaves me intrigued, wanting more.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

When I last reviewed Victor Bravo, I predicted that their full-length album would be absolutely explosive. And it is — everything here is vigorous and blazing and furious. But what makes these grunge-rockers so promising is where they\u2019ve left off with \u201cLong Face,\u201d which shows that when they rock, they\u2019re great, but even when they scale it back, they still rock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7926],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41011","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-victor-bravo","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41011","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\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41011"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41011"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}