A Dream Too Late

Intermission To The Moon

Written by: DY on 02/12/2007 00:06:24

Hailing from Albany, Oregon, A Dream Too Late is a three-piece rock band signed to Tooth & Nail records. Their debut full length is a record I nearly wrote off completely on first listen, but has since redeemed itself enough to get a half decent review out of me. "Intermission To The Moon" is what you could describe as pretty straight forward rock, slightly off-centered by the use of electronic synth in the songs. Unfortunately then, it was obvious early on that this band was going to have to be extremely good at what they do to make a significant and lasting impact on my ears. Although they've given it a stab, it's not quite there yet.

The record opens with "14th and Knott", a soft track consisting of delayed semi-acoustic guitars and soothing synth, underlying Reid Anderson's gentle vocals about pursuing your dreams and never giving up. It precedes what I think is the album's best material, in "Do You Believe (In Ghosts)?", where the band picks up some pace and displays some impressive songwriting talent. Palm muted verses, filled out with spacey sound effects provide the platform for some of Anderson's more spiritual vocals, as he asks the question posed in the title, revealing his Christian beliefs for the first time on the record. The band's faith becomes a fairly common theme throughout the record, as does the continuation of the feeling you get that the most interesting and original parts of the album are found in the lyrics.

The record's title track does nothing really to inspire the listener to get excited about anything other than the fact that they probably have several other better band's CDs in their collection that they can listen to instead of this. "Trendsetter" is as cheezy as they come, but thankfully "The Life" redeems the band to some extent, with another spiritual track with inspiring lyrics discussing the surrendering of your life to God and a willingness to change, as Anderson sings, 'from the inside out'. But again, musically it's nothing to be excited about. Like the album, it's simple, melodic and slow paced rock but there's just nothing gripping about it.

I'm not going into detail on the rest of the songs on the record because to be perfectly honest, you won't find anything new in them that I haven't already mentioned. There's no moments of genius talent or standout songs that can pull this record up from just 'meh' and if played it will serve as nothing more than background music. In fact, there are loads more bands you could use as background music that would do a far better job. It's obvious that there is talent within the band, but the ability to channel it creatively is what seems to be lacking.

I'm not going to completely slate this album, because it's really not terribly bad. Nor does it try and do something new and fail miserably, in fact it doesn't try anything new at all and that's pretty much the problem. Although lyrically the album has merit, musically it never really ventures past the border of boring and repetitive and for that reason it's not going to make the cut as one of the records I'm ever going to listen to again. Frustratingly average.

5

Download: Do You Believe (In Ghosts)?, The Life
For The Fans Of: Falling Up, Anberlin
Listen: Myspace

Release Date 06.11.2007
Tooth & Nail Records

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