Quiet Slang - Everything Matters But No One Is Listening

Rating:

A welcome expansion to last year’s ‘We Were Babies & We Were Dirtbags’ EP.

Quiet Slang is the brainchild of Beach Slang frontman James Alex, taking the band’s songs and replacing the roaring guitars and pounding drums with a piano and string quartet. It works too, to a certain extent, allowing the bona fide American romanticism of Alex’s lyrics to come to the forefront. Songs like ‘Noisy Heaven’ and ‘Dirty Cigarettes’ have been given new leases of life, but spread across an entire album the idea falters and becomes underwhelming.

‘Spin the Dial’ has been turned from a teen movie soundtrack cliché to something completely different where “I was born at the bottom but I never belonged” has lost its rock n roll charm while ‘Warpaint’ has lost its rallying cry quality. The album is a welcome expansion to last year’s ‘We Were Babies & We Were Dirtbags’ EP but could have benefitted from varying from the path Alex has defined Quiet Slang to be. Josh Williams