Review of The Kissaway Trail Album by The Kissaway Trail

The Kissaway Trail
The Kissaway Trail
Album Review

The Kissaway Trail The Kissaway Trail Album

Bella Union has gained a solid reputation for its output of late, allowing exciting artists like Fionn Regan time to flourish and produce quality records, without any unnecessary industry pressure. While it doesn't match Mr Regan's sublime The End of History, the label's latest offering by Danish five-piece The Kissaway Trail does nothing to dent the grand tradition they've got going.

The Kissaway Trail evidently deal in the same kind of epic, sweeping indie-rock as The Arcade Fire, particularly on opener 'Forever Turned Out To Be Too Long', which with its dusty pump organ and strings sound, could be an outtake from Neon Bible. Elsewhere, 'Tracy' could be 'Wake Up''s lesser cousin; fine, but it's been done before, and better.

Indeed, if there's anything that lets this record down, it's the lyrics. 'La La Song' is an enormously fun piece of pop, all handclaps and 'yeah yeah''s, which is blighted by the quite honestly ridiculous lyric, 'Let's rock them around in L.A.''61' is initially a good idea, its martial drums and romantic, war-time lyrics recall The Decemberists at their most whimsical, however, it stretches on interminably, missing the 'epic' mark they were aiming for and settling somewhere between portentous and disappointing.

That said, there is enough fine material on here to warrant further investigation, particularly the lovely 'Smother + Evil = Hurt' and the Flaming Lips style 'It's Close Up Far Away'.
The Kissaway Trail are certainly a band with a great deal of potential, if they could become less in thrall to their influences, then their next record could be brilliant.

Ben Davis


Site - http://www.thekissawaytrail.com

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