Reviewed by Eric Saeger
Half the time, Boston-based Dear Hunter bandleader Casey Crescenzo has a voice that sounds like Julian Casablancas out of a pull-top can, but he can also do a passable Brandon Flowers. Given this, there’s obvious potential for making a permanent mark in show biz, at least for the next 15 minutes or so, and furthermore Manchester Orchestra helped out a little on this LP. But he’s a New England guy, having immigrated to Rhode Island from Boston, and hence prone to doing silly-ass egghead projects, for example this LP, “a collection of EPs” that apparently haven’t ever surfaced individually although their “highlights” are here. The problem? Cohesiveness, what else. It’s She Wants Revenge on ‘Filth and Squalor’, then Haujobb on ‘Deny It All’, and then ‘But There’s Wolves’ futzes with a goth angle before turning on a dime to front like My Morning Jacket reinventing ‘Whole Lotta Love’, all of which leads to Band of Horses-like alt-folk – complete with dobro – on ‘Things That Hide Away’, segueing into the even more countrified ‘The Canopy’. Later still, ‘Trapdoor’ muddies the water into complete opaqueness with a Strokes-as-blues-band angle. The songs are fine in their own rights, and it may have been artistically cathartic for Crescenzo to barf out these utterly strange-bedfellow tunes, but ahem, his whole band left prior to this album’s completion, a really, really smart career move on their part. Pick a genre, guy, it’s easy.
Grade: B-
