Written By Hilary HughesRating: 3 Guns
As an undergrad at a liberal arts school famous for its hipsters and hippies just outside of New York City, I always knew who the cool kids were when they would traipse off to Brooklyn or Boston on the weekends to drink PBR in the company of other bandana-wearing, pistol/robot/anatomical heart-tattoo-sporting hipsters.
On campus, these kids would sign up at the Kafe Haus for the monthly Open Mic Night [yeah, I know it means “Coffee House”, but my school was too cool for English, I guess].
Showcasing their “talents” while performing songs of their own styling, they sounded mostly like cheap knockoffs of the Postal Service or Shins tracks that they ironically danced to during their off-campus shenanigans. The point of my hipster trashing, you ask? Mar’s new album, The Sound, is an album that would get along famously with the musical tastes of my former student body.
The Sound is full of familiar sounds, basically: the simple drum beats accompanying slowly plucked major chords, the sythnesizers, the reverb of the keyboard, the slooow, softly-sighed vocals of one with a multi-octave range have been sampled before as far back as early Eels and as recently as the “emotional” soundtrack to “Garden State.”
With that said, I’m not hating on it: the melodies are beautiful and Mar’s latest work is a great selection to play before bedtime. At times I feel Mar pushes it on the experimental factor (on track “Farewell”), but I’m down with the feel-good vibes emitting from “A Celebration” and the majority of the songs on the CD.
A little less raucous than the bulk of The Shins/The Eels/The Postal Service’s catalogue, but I’m sure that anyone willing to give this disc a listen will also note the resemblance. Unless you’re a hipster; in that case, you’ll probably roll your eyes at me (ironically), snatch the CD, and head straight on to the rooftop parties of Williamsburg.
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