Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures (2005)In going through this journey of re-discovery, I've found myself sometimes getting writers block when trying to describe one of my favorite albums. As much as I'd like to say "yeah dude, it's just awesome, man!", I know that readers need me to be a little more articulate when it comes to describing music, and for my own selfish reasons, I want to look back and remember what it is that made me geek out about certain bands so much.
During college, I worked for The State Press, ASU's newspaper, doing weekly CD reviews that would coincide with The Blaze 1260AM's Top 10 spinning albums. The practice started to become daunting though, especially when I didn't know much about the artist. Daunting sounds like a bad word, but between the deadlines and 500 word limits, I often times would resort to calling something a "dance party" or "ambient" and calling it a day. This is probably why I changed to marketing instead of wanting to write for Rolling Stone. Sometimes, I just really like the music, that's all.
For Rogue Wave however, I was able to dig a little deeper thanks to my editors interest in the group. They were coming through town with Nada Surf, and she asked that I do an interview with them in advance of the show. I had only done a handful of feature stories and was excited since I had recently gotten the record and saw it as a "featured pick" by Stinkweeds owner Kimber Lanning in her store. I got in touch with Sub Pop and did my internet research on the band, calling them during the afternoon one day while they were on tour. Zach was running a fever but still sat down to talk with me, where we discussed the formation of the band (which happened sort of on accident), what it's like to work with a record label after self-releasing the last record and their relentless touring. After we were finished and the story published, I felt invested into this band and their record, so much so that I tracked them down that Spring at SXSW, seeing an awesome acoustic performance despite not getting into their 21+ showcase. I've seen them play twice since then and since their newest record came out.
I wish my long, drawn-out story about wanting to articulate music better translated into a really great and articulate review of this record, but I'm afraid I might fall short. However, rest assured that this record is just plain GREAT. It threw me for a loop as something I truly hadn't heard before but unfortunately fell into the shadow of their other whispery, dreamy label-mates, Band of Horses. Their journey from full rocking to acoustic jamming to drawing parallels to Simon and Garfunkel, involves the listener in coasting along with them through this record by way of Zach's controlled vocals amidst fluctuations of rocking and less rocking. This is the first record that Zach allowed collaborations with the full band (Out of the Shadow was written and performed entirely by him) which I think elevates the music. It is a far more polished record than his first, showing that he took direction from different minds across the board. Despite it's ambient (ha!) characteristics, it's the pop hooks that really make the record what it is instead of falling into a dreamy puddle of noise.
I like to think my lack of articulation on a record like this stems not from a lackluster performance, but from the fact that an album like this is SO good, no words can really do it justice.
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