World Famous In San Francisco

The Switch are one of those bands who use ironic children's keyboards as instruments. On one hand they aspire to make the same epic dance songs that bands like New Order perfected decades ago; And on the other hand they make these inde rock songs that pout and shuffle around like Black Heart Procession. Basically they pretty much avoid having any fun while mashing together some morose genres of music. It's hard for me to imagine that their lives are really as depressed and humorless as this music they are making.

I got this album at The Switch's show a couple weeks ago at the Stud. They were surrounded by supportive friends who wholeheartedly dug the music. To me they came off as inexperienced live performers. They were sloppy and anything but casual. But don't get me wrong, I think this band has a lot of potential as their songs are well constructed, to the point, and unique enough. I think their main battle is gonna be discovering their voice.

The Switch are really good at finding sounds on keyboards... but what they need to do is focus on finding different sounds in their singers voices. Main singer Christine does that female-singing-below-range thing that Nancy Sinatra and Nico were so good at. Her voice is not strong enough to really carry that style though. She probably should sing an octave higher. She definitely needs to be a bit more expressive, louder and conscious of what she's doing. She delivers absurd lines about unicorns and male fantasies the same way she delivers what seems to be serious lines about foreskin and circumcision. It bums me out that all these clever lines and catch phrases fall flat just because her voice doesn't sound engaged. The lyrics are interesting enough, they're just not delivered in a way where you'd notice them or be able to remember them. The samey vocal thing just isn't working. I think she needs to start listening to Biggie.

I just don't see any momentum coming from this release. Maybe their epic journey music will take them... somewhere more epic on the next album? Maybe they will discover the magic healing crystal? We will just have to wait and see.