antiReviews:
The
People Involved - self-titled
Review by Mr Huh?
The
People Involved - self-titled
Rating:
When the opening guitar drone comes in
at the beginning, my first thought was "the new Radiohead album?"
That thought eventually went away with further listening and the voice
of The People Involved's frontman and singer, Chris Anthony. A bit
of a Radiohead influence pervades their sound still but with some of The
Cure and World Music influences thrown in and lyrics that at times are
more concrete and still manage to have some wit, such as in "Cantilever"
("She found Jesus/I guess he was lost/A little pissed off/Can you believe
it") or the song "Hey Jude Law". I'm assuming the actor. Got
me what their beef is but apparently it has something to do with the frontman
being "the son of Dabbs O' Bannon". The second half of the CD is
actually better than the first with the anthemic "Some Resemblance" to
the best track on the album, the solemn "My Name" which comes off sounding
like a Renaissance-era folk tune without being dated.
It's more stripped down whereas other songs
on the album tend to suffer a bit from being overburdened by too much going
on at once.
