{"id":133,"date":"2011-10-13T15:49:29","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T14:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=133"},"modified":"2011-10-13T16:16:35","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T15:16:35","slug":"music-review-the-domino-state-uneasy-lies-the-crown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=133","title":{"rendered":"Music Review: The Domino State “Uneasy Lies the Crown”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Domino State<\/a> \u201cUneasy Lies the Crown\u201d Exhibition Records<\/p>\n

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This is the debut album from British guitar band The Domino State.<\/p>\n

You know what you hate about British guitar bands, like say Snow Patrol, or U2 (even though they aren\u2019t British) after they stopped giving a crap?\u00a0 How the song starts at one level, then gets louder, and more instruments join in, and the singer repeats the same meaningless lyrics over and over and over?\u00a0 You know, how if you just lie here, just uh y\u2019know, here, just lie here\u2026 God, I hate British guitar music.\u00a0 Yeah, that \u201cyou\u201d was actually me.\u00a0 The point is, it\u2019s predictable, meaningless and boring.<\/p>\n

But luckily for \u201cyou\u201d and me, there\u2019s The Domino State.\u00a0 While superficially their sound fits into the mainstream Brit-guitar-rock sound, with ringing guitars, straightup drumming and a singer who stretches the words across half- and whole-notes, they have a lot more going for them than their peers.\u00a0 Listen to a song like \u201cThis Oubliette\u201d, which was featured on the New Song Daily a while ago.\u00a0 The song builds itself on the core of a nice melody from the vocalist and really nice lead and rhythm guitar interplay, plus a strong and simple bassline.\u00a0 The band deftly cranks up the intensity across five minutes, through rises and dips in both the volume and how many instruments are playing, and what they\u2019re playing, until for the last minute it creeps into a Sonic Youth-ish noise landscape (which, to be honest, I wish went on for twice as long as it does). \u00a0It\u2019ll be stuck in your head for the next two weeks. \u00a0By the way, what\u2019s an oubliette? Anyway, I\u2019m glad I\u2019m not Laura, and I think she, too, might be sorry she came.<\/p>\n

Okay, I looked up oubliette in the dictionary. \u00a0So should you.<\/p>\n

The Domino State manage to play song after song using the template of \u201cThis Oubliette\u201d (though they don\u2019t all end in Sonic Youth wigouts), but without the songs all bleeding together to sound like the same thing. \u00a0The best thing about this album is the tension that drives the songs through their handling of melody and rhythm across all the instruments. \u00a0The singer has a good range and control of his voice: he sings the higher, prettier tenor parts as well as he sings lower, darker tones on other songs. \u00a0The guitars, as I said, play well off each other, and the bass and drums don\u2019t do anything flashy, but they do it very well, as a rhythm section should. \u00a0In fact, there\u2019s the thing that makes this band as good as it is: there is essentially nothing flashy about The Domino State, but there\u2019s a lot of thought and care behind what they\u2019re doing, which gives their music a depth and complexity that most of their so-called peers don\u2019t match, and when the tension of their songs releases, you\u2019re listening to a band that actually knows how to rock with a bit of swagger, rather than just with the right pose. \u00a0\u201cYou\u201d would like to see this band on the same bill as a band like The National, and for the love of God, you\u2019d like to hear them replace most of what passes for guitar rock on the mainstream radio.<\/p>\n

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