by Michele Zipkin
The DC-born quartet known as Melodime brought their southern-tinged rock and roll to Philly’s North Star Bar last Tuesday night. They pretty much started with a bang by delving into their high-energy electro-acoustic rock, the crux of their songwriting steeze.
Stylistically speaking, if Gavin DeGraw, Train and Bruce Springsteen had a musical brain-child together, it would vastly resemble Melodime. They played their hits and then some, including “Lullaby”, “Halo” and “Love Songs and Other Lies” from their album Where the Sinners and Saints Collide, as well as a few older and newer songs. One of those new tunes by the name of “Second Hand Smoke” (an homage to Sublime?) called to mind “Harder to Breathe” by Maroon 5 in its overall intensity, hot little electric guitar riff and audacious lyrics.
A few of the couples in the sparse, yet impassioned crowd were swaying to Melodime’s music in a romantic embrace. The band can get rowdy and heartfelt all in the same breath, practically.
The above-mentioned album, Where the Sinners and Saints Collide, comes attached to a philanthropic story in which the four collaborators embarked on a mission to raise money in order to provide instruments to kids in disadvantaged communities. The fund-raising campaign called “Make an Album, Change a Life,” made it possible for the band to raise enough money to cut the record and generate enough proceeds to start a nonprofit foundation called Now I Play Along Too. The foundation provides instruments and music education to orphans, victims of disaster, and under served children in local communities.
According to a video that the guys made in support of the album and their funding campaign, the themes of the record are rooted in redemption and hope, and convey the idea that “…no matter how many mistakes you’ve made or how dark your past might be, it’s never too late to step into the life that you were intended to live and be a part of something that really matters,” lead singer Bradley Rhodes said.
The four guys from DC are talented, creative, generous, and have incredible presence when they perform. However, many of the songs in their set that night were monstrously loud, and suffered from the instrumentals infringing on the clarity of the vocals. This was most likely due to the fact that the guitarists and bass/keyboard player were playing through their own amplifiers, instead of through the house sound system.
Guitar-driven rock bands typically play through their own amps, but if they had let the engineer control the volume via the mixing board, he would have adjusted it to balance the instruments and the vocals. However, the band saturated the venue with a wall of sound, partially drowning out the vocal melody, and thus encroaching upon the lyrics. Isn’t it a shame to have had those tonal stories and beautiful singing cloaked by nearly ear-piercing decibels radiating from those amps?
Nonetheless, the four guys from DC are making good music, and making good with their music by helping to enrich the lives of underprivileged children. If only they had lowered those volume knobs just one or two notches.
