By the End of Tonight
A Tribute to Tigers
(Temporary Residence Limited, 2005)

By the End of Tonight have put a lot of time and effort in organizing these five instrumental rock songs clocking in at thirty minutes. The band always stays together even during their erratic and frequent tempo changes.  The musician ship is above boards.  The drums on “Tigers” probably stands out the most, not just from a talent perspective, but also because it doesn’t sound like the rest of the album.  All those nice and warm feelings aside, there’s only one other moment on the album that I will be able to recall two weeks hence.  A tempo change on the first track “4’s, 5’s, and the Piano that Never Made it Home” stands out similarly to the drum beat referenced previously as being different from the rest of the album.  Too bad there are only those two pieces of shimmering talent through the shower of mediocrity and wankery that make up the remainder of this slab.  Occasionally, the band sounds like Weezer if they were more pretentious and didn’t sing.  So, that’s not too bad, but who’s heard from Weezer lately?  Not me.  There’s some screaming that introduces “Stop, Drop and Roll Does Not Work in Hell”.  While the track name may be amusing and clever, the track is not and brings to the fore of my mind a question.  What’s the deal with the long titles?  I’m going to have to sight Shai Hulud again as perpetrators of such egregious maneuvers, but indie rock bands are guilty too.  And really it just takes up space in record reviews, which lessens the rock critics’ ability to heap on the knowledge.  I’ll end with a message to clever musicians everywhere; keep the titles and in-crowd jokes to yourself, because I myself am not clever.

The Jai-Alai Savant
Thunderstatement
(Gold Standard Laboratories, 2005)

Currently in music, the underground variety at-least, it has become rather common to say that you are heavily influenced by dub, yet create music that is completely detached from that idea.  The Jai-Alai Savant plainly state their pleasure in dub, in print and in their music.  Whether or not intentional, they begin with the older brother of dub, ska.  The guitar is very firmly at the head of the beat, which is one stylistic difference between the two Jamaican musics.  Regardless of that, the band bears a striking resemblance to a band from Chicago called The Eternals.  Amongst the ranks of this Chi-band is a man named Damon Locks, who makes a guest appearance on one track as well as creating the artwork that graces this E.P.  In addition to the Jamaican influences, or perhaps another part of them, is the band’s harmonizing.  While this adds to their musical prowess, the band is locked into one mode of creation.  Each track boasts a ska, reggae or dub vibe, then shifts towards a standard rock chorus.  Not bad for a first E.P., we’ll see where they go from here.  Certainly this is promising amalgam of musics.