Finding Their Own Mood

This ep has nothing to do with French symbolism. The band is called “The Mood” and the ep is called Synaesthesia, leaving one to expect some down-tempo, modernist electronica, and providing just the opposite; basic, A-B-C 1-2-3 guitar pop. Confusing right? If you were mystified about their aims, the NYC five-piece lists a number of influences including The Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Tom Petty, Weezer, etc. As such, it’s pretty clear that they didn’t come to reinvent the wheel or anything like that; they just want to rock.

Unfortunately, several decades past the birth, rocking for rock’s sake just won’t suffice anymore. If a band wants all the boys and girls in the street to feel ‘Glad All Over,’ or to think they’re ‘Free Falling,’ then there’s buttons that have to be pushed, levers that have to be pulled. What I mean to say is, a band can definitely play the same kind of music of their heroes, but it has to be pretty well executed if anyone’s going to care about it. Unfortunately for The Mood, the flat vocals and weak chord progressions they deliver on Synaesthesia don’t come close to delivering the same kind of emotional syrup of their forebears.

This isn’t to say that Synaesthesia’s all bad. ‘In the Forest’, ‘Masquerade’, and sinfully fun ‘Eskimo Scientist’ come closest to the type of pop that The Mood is aiming for. But even on their best tracks they sorely fall short of the type of bands that they’re attempting to emulate. Instead, it feels like they’re going through the motions of being a band.

Matthew Richardson