Oleander
Something Beautiful
Reviewed by Michele Zipkin
California-based post-grunge group Oleander will release their fifth studio album tomorrow, April 16th. A few of their hit songs may be familiar, including “Down When I’m Loaded” and “Why I’m Here” from February Son, as well as “Are You There”, about the firefighters of the September 11th attacks. This is their first record since the band took a hiatus in 2003 and reconvened in 2008. On the whole, they are not breaking new ground in terms of style or lyrical content.
Their latest effort opens with a high-energy and guitar-heavy number, “Fight”, which starts off the album with a lot of gusto and electricity, especially with the group shouts of ‘fight’ in the chorus and the tremelo-like guitar solo. The title track perpetuates this same mood, at least in the intro and chorus. It’s only mildly sing-along-able, though its message is very positive and heartwarming, which is slightly odd but endearing contrast to the band’s post-grunge-pop steeze. Musically, it seems as though we’ve heard these songs before.
The band just hasn’t pushed past that drums/bass/guitar alt-rock idea that encompasses a lot of their earlier work. Some of their previous output, at least the songs on February Son, is a touch more melodic and even artfully written, less aggressive and more easily metabolized by the ear. The group’s different colors make themselves known a little bit on this new album (the acoustic gentleness of “Where Do We go From Here” versus the raucousness of “Fight”), but it seems like those colors are only loud and vicious, middle-of-the-road pop-driven, or acoustic and mellow.
Oleander’s instrumental work can be quite complex at times, especially in the title track and “Never Too Late” (after a relatively calm intro, the mood heats up in the initially riffing but later soloistic electric guitar.) But just as the songs on Something Beautiful are united under straight forward instrumentation, it longs for stylistic diversity. Not one of these songs stand out particularly because they are all composed of texturally and melodically similar vocal work and instrumental riffs, chords and solo lines.
This record reminds me of many bands of the ’90s (Oleander did start making music then after all) like The Verve Pipe and Tonic. There’s a certain stylistic umbrella under which a lot of these bands fall, with some wiggle room, and the relative simplicity of instrumentation on this record typical of many bands of that decade is a breath of fresh air. However, this songwriting style thrived in the ’90s and early ’00s, and there is no need to reawaken it.
