Self proclaimed acoustic acid rockers Lazy Preacher recently released their fourth studio LP 4th and Independent earlier in 2009. Other reviews have stated that the musical style of the band is similar to Radiohead and The Flaming Lips, but the only people that are going to hear the comparisons between these two other bands are fans that are indeed on acid while they listen to this meandering acoustic album.
The album begins with melodic, acoustic guitars that allow you to float away when coupled with the cloudy vocals of the lead singer. However, when you start to listen to the lyrics you realize that the climbing harmonies don’t offer any comfort like the music suggests. In fact, this seems to be the formula for most of the tracks on 4th and Independent – Amiable, strolling guitars + soft, cloudy, tissue paper vocals + oddly depressing lyrics = mind-meld of gooey songs molded into one big indistinguishable storm cloud. Halfway through the album you begin to wonder if you are ever going to come down.
It’s kind of like listening to a summer album that you can lean back and let yourself become immersed in, but when you look out the window it is dreary, raining and cold outside as the news channel in the background is reinforcing the idea that yet another flu epidemic is knocking on everyone’s door. And if the media so much as mentions the words “infected,” “feed,” and “manflesh” the general public will become convinced that the zombie revolution has finally arrived in the form of a flu virus. It was only a matter of time, anyway. But hey, go ahead and shut those blinds, switch off the television, sit in your leather la-z-boy and pour yourself another pina colada because where you live, on 4th and Independent, you can wrap yourself up in a cozy blanket and feel warm and safe as the Lazy Preacher uses euphemistic music to tell you to ignore that ghastly sore forming on your forearm and that unusual, insatiable hunger in your gut.
Perhaps, the band’s utilization of this musical formula is the result of their environment. The quartet, Demian Talmo, Matt Leroy, Josh Bessom and Long Nguyen, hail from Huntington Beach, California, a place of sun, sand, and the best surfing in the world. But, even in a city like that, where the girls are hot, beers are cold, and the waves are big, the human condition still seeps in, making the surreal real. This may be the grip of the band, no matter how good life may look, it is still life and life is hard and that one needs to remember that hero’s have heroic flaws.
Collin Minnis-MuzikReviews.com Contributor
October 15, 2009
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