Empty Vessels
If It Came Down To It
Empty Vessels are a three-piece anti-industry rock band with strong ideas of what they do and don’t like. Pitching themselves as ‘a reaction against the factory-farmed noise that fills the airwaves like fungus’, the music is surprisingly appealing and sits alongside your shrink-wrapped vaguely retro bands without to much friction.
‘If It Came Down To It’ adds some clean drumming to a textured guitar tone, hinting at a sound halfway between The Beatles and early Mansun. The vocal is slightly Roxy music, not quite as camp, but with a similar self-confident wriggle.
The second song, ‘Reassurance’, is a bit more off the beaten track with a creative build up of noise that is split between a messy guitar, tidy rhythm and increasingly insane vocal that’s part dog and part bird. The chaos is reined in occasionally by the melody, which is the main hook ( and only focus) of the track. Now this sounds more like anti-commercial music. Strange, interesting and, well, weird.
‘You Know’ takes the general appeal of the first track and adds a pinch of bizarre. This may be a bit of a compromise, but it works really well with some of the vocals and guitars taking directions unhinged from the steady drums and bass line.
This definitely isn’t what I was expecting. I thought that this would be incredibly grating, overdone and far too up-their-own arses. However, although the effort is definitely made to make journeys that stray from the evil-corporation-music, there is still an underlying thread of listenable rock music that forms a washing line for the odd stuff to hang from.
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Written by Fenton on
