by Marisa Demarco
Daily Lobo
Everyone wants to be Radiohead.
Everyone wants to be the innovative band that could. It's where whining suburban white-boy rock is going - the last valid route for a dying breed of skinny, shaggy-haired, acoustic guitar wielding youth. Everyone wants to be the band that genre-crosses, creates a distinctive sound and achieves respect of both mainstream and underground variety.
Kimone wants to be this band. Kimone is not this band. Kimone could also be known as "Radiohead, The Sequel" or "Ready Made for the Peak."
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Here at CafÇ Generica we serve albums of the just-add-water variety. On special tonight is Kimone's Meres of Twilight, an album so unoriginal it could be served along side a 39-cent cheeseburger or as part of a six-pack.
What's the major complaint? There isn't one really. The album, though maybe a bit overproduced, is constructed well enough, runs smoothly, everyone's in tune, etc. The recording is good, the melodies are tight, the riffs are solid. It's just that every song that's come out in the soft alternative genre in the past year sounds exactly like it.
Track two, "Barrierbarrierbarrier," begins with a beat that has a grainy sound quality and intonation is almost a direct Kid A rip-off. The way the super-reverb guitar floats in doesn't help anything.
"Pretentious" is one word that comes to mind with regard to the lyrics - along with a few others. Tim Den is either a high-school student trying to sound smart, or just an overeducated pompous ass. Songs like "In the Warmth of Meanings Redefined" yield such lyrics as, "Nothing's safe when safe no longer feels the same/ foreign tides entombed me, their poison in my veins."
Before it even begins, the listener can probably predict the strings supporting the floaty, circular guitar riff on "Earthling." But again, this band is not lacking ability, or at least its producer isn't. The band just isn't adding anything new to a thoroughly tired idea - it's not a bad idea, just a sleepy, meandering one.
But if you have to Xerox something, it might as well be banal enough that it won't make waves one way or the other. Meres of Twilight isn't going to change the face of popular music. It probably won't even pockmark it.
And when the gently swaying vocals croon in round form "Lifeboats going down" on "Shipwright," I kind of squinted, but I don't think I batted any eyes.
How does a band like Kimone qualify as prosaic? I don't believe them. The expensive words don't mean anything. The band's sound is so clean you could eat off of it and not consume the slightest sense of kinship, or a dust particle of recognition.
Meres of Twilight is like impressionistic paintings of fat ladies or codeine-laden daydreams, pleasant and inconsequential. The songs on the album are like "Peeps," those marshmallow candy birds - puffy things with no substance that come uniform with two color options.
Too much of a good thing will give you a swollen tastebud.
