Vinyl Floor is a Danish band formed by brothers Thomas Charlie Pedersen and Daniel Pedersen. With four previous albums under their belt\u2014none of which, I must admit, I\u2019d heard of, much less heard\u2014one would think that they had their act fairly polished to the point that any release they would launch on the public would be powerful and gripping.<\/p>\n
Funhouse Mirror<\/i>, Vinyl Floor\u2019s fifth full-length release, doesn\u2019t quite deliver on those hopes. The music is pleasant enough, but there isn\u2019t enough that grabs me by the ears and says, \u201cPay attention! This is important stuff!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
The brothers Pedersen handle most of the instruments themselves (with some help from Bebe Risenfors and Rob Stoner on a few tracks), and there\u2019s no doubt they\u2019re capable musicians and talented songwriters. Again, not having heard their previous releases, it seems safe to conclude that they took all the lessons they learned prior and tried to focus the results on the ten tracks comprising this disc.<\/i><\/p>\n
The issue isn\u2019t with the performances, or even the songwriting per se. Tracks like \u201cClock With No Hands,\u201d \u201cEver, The Optimist\u201d and \u201cPretty Predictable\u201d are pleasant enough to listen to. The issue is that this is all they tend to be\u2014simply pleasant tunes that would play in the background unobtrusively. There isn\u2019t anything that commands the listener\u2019s attention or suggests that the band is on the cusp of something big in their career.<\/i><\/p>\n
Yet some hope lies within Funhouse Mirror<\/i>. \u201cStare, Scare\u201d has a powerful opening that does<\/i> make the listener sit up and pay attention. In this particular case, the vocal performance (akin to a poor man\u2019s Psychedelic Furs) takes away from that power\u2014which is a shame. Similarly, the disc\u2019s closing track \u201cDays\u201d has the power and majesty that the album overall had been missing\u2014dear Lord, where were these moments? Had there been more examples on the disc like these two tracks, and with stronger vocal performances, my overall opinion of the album would be much stronger.<\/i><\/p>\n
The thing is, I went into this wanting<\/i> to sing the praises of Vinyl Floor. I wanted to have my socks knocked off by Funhouse Mirror<\/i>, without having heard a single note. Something about the band made me intrigued enough to give them a chance. Unfortunately, there weren\u2019t enough of these moments to live up to my expectations, and when they finally did come, they came too late to save the disc as a whole.<\/i><\/p>\n
If anything, the closing tracks of Funhouse Mirror<\/i> should serve as the template for the Pedersens whenever it comes time to do their next disc. If there were more moments like \u201cDays\u201d and \u201cStare, Scare,\u201d then I truly believe these guys could<\/i> be a powerhouse band on the fringes of greatness. For now, though, Funhouse Mirror<\/i> stands as a faded, cracked reminder of what could have been.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10766],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-46418","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-vinyl-floor","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46418","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46418"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}