Blank Realm - Grassed In (2014)
First thoughts on Blank Realm as they entered my head: “These amp settings indicate that indie is about to follow” and “That singer has one hell of a cold.” Not that there’s anything wrong with unique vocal timbres. Blank Realm is a self-proclaimed “hard boogie” (sounded more like noise pop/alternative rock) band from Australia, for those who are unfamiliar, and their latest album is an eight-song travesty entitled “Grassed Inn”.
I can appreciate vocals like these. The nasally, half-spoken, deliberately imprecise style connotes uncertainty and makes for a more pensive delivery, which is in line with the pensive indie idiom. If Grouplove can do it, you can too. However, I can’t quite appreciate what this album is doing on Pitchfork’s “Best Indie Albums of 2014”. Perhaps an indie purist would be more receptive to the message wrapped up in this psychedelic packaging; personally, I found it pleasant, but not groundbreaking.
Let’s start with the good. The album opens with the upbeat “Back to the Flood”, a caffeine-kick of distorted guitar, synth and heavily filtered vocals. Other standout songs include the outer-spacey “Violet Delivery” and “Bell Tower”, an eight-minute long tale of losing one’s sanity. The latter was a refreshing departure from the diatonicism of the rest of the album. The constantly shifting tonal center conveyed the confusion and disorientation of the subject matter quite well, a phenomenon reinforced by the pitch-bending guitar and heavy chorus effect.
Now for the not-so-good. The band certainly uses repetition deliberately, which can be great when used sparingly, as any other trope of composition. The repetition of certain riffs, particularly at the end of songs, successfully lulls the listeners into a hypnotic blur, as seems to be the shoegaze-influenced band’s intention. However, certain less deliberately used instances of repetition were actively interfering with my appreciation of the album by the halfway point. To put it more simply, certain indie-isms were making the experience rather monotonous: the I-IV or IV-I chord progressions, clean guitar, reverb, major pentatonic riffs, boots-and-cats beat, and parades of straight eighth notes. There wasn’t much to make this album stand out from the others. But the use of these indie-isms brings up some questions: do the clichés make the idiom, or does the idiom make the clichés? And do the artists rely on these tropes actively? Hopefully not. Pretentious philosophies aside, I would give this album a 4/10.
