GIVERS - New Kingdom

GIVERS
New Kingdom
2015
GIVERS - New Kingdom (Spotify)

It is not everyday after listening to over 300 albums in so many days that you find something that really surprises you. Bands and genres as a whole get into a rhythm, sure something might have a new take or a twist but nothing straight bonkers comes to mind. Enter New Kingdom. Listening to each one of these tracks if you could find something tying it all together (other than the two singers' voices) you would really have a feat on your hands. "Mother of Love" is nothing like the four tracks that proceed it nor is it anything like those that follow. At times the album teeters on the pop spectrum but then jumps head first into more art rock. "Growls" focuses much more on creating a variety of sounds that it does on making a coherent track that has some kind of progression. The first four tracks seem to be the bands attempt at corralling their more avante-garde aspirations and they are in turn really successful. However the rest of the album does take a turn that for many will be hard to take.

With the exception of "Blinking", which could be an Arcade Fire song in another life, New Kingdom's renaming songs are filled with a great deal of noise but loose out on the whole song aspect. GIVERS' attempts at making those sing-a-long room filling tracks are valid but they never commit fully to the endeavor. It seems as though this is a record trying to be to much all at once rather than focusing down a really refining a sound. Things do tend to meander towards the end of the album with the last three songs accounting for over 15 minutes of the album which only has a 56 minute run time. There are however moments where the spark is certainly there for GIVERS. New Kingdom is most likely not going to make any top 10 lists out there, but for it's really new and interesting take it is still worth your time to take a listen.

6.1 out of 10