Metropolitan
Down For You Is Up CD - Crank Automotive

The vocals on this disc really bug me. It sounds like the vocalist (John Masters) is both singing outside his range and singing with a fake English accent simultaneously - don’t know if this has anything to do with the band being from Virginia or not, but it seems like a lot of bands from there like to pretend they’re the Davies brothers. Musically, the band is pretty much your standard three-chord power pop trio, but with the strained, I’m-holding-my-breath-for-way-too-long vocals; they almost sound like a slowed-down, hung-over Rush more than anything, which I’m tempted to applaud them for if this is an intentional effect, just because it would be such an obnoxious thing to strive for, but I really don’t think it is. The recording quality is really flat, too, which probably adds to the overall dull feeling to the music on the disc - nothing really jumps out, everything’s recorded at exactly the same level (although there are occasionally some irritating the-guitar-is-jumping-from-one-speaker-to-the-other effects) and the ending result is pretty bland. The disc also includes a video of the song “Westmoreland,” but I wasn’t able to access it because my computer’s a piece of crap. (Holly Day)
www.crankautomotive.com