 | Film School |
Fission is the third album from Los Angeles-based alt-rock band Film School and finds them further perfecting and honing that hazy, noisy and My Bloody Valentine influenced rock sound even further with some great hooks and very well done songs. While the band certainly owes a lot to MBV and the influence is strong to say the least, they put together great songs on their own and have some really good material here that can split the difference between more uptempo rock songs and more methodical, noisy MBV style songs. They put them both forward together here and it works very well.
The first few tracks on the record kind of combine their clear alt-rock sensibilities with a little more uptempo, forward moving rock songs with a steady, quick beat and some choppy, quick chords behind them. The opener “Heart Full of Pentagons” is a good example as it really owes as much to Loveless as it does to LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends”. There are also an abundance of noisy, spacy rock MBV style numbers on here as well, such as “Waited” which lumbers and stomps along with some great atmospheric guitar noise blanketing the backing tracks. They also bring forth some new wave era influences as well into this with songs like “Meet Around 10″ with a steady, simple bassline and chorused up guitars. “Distant Life” evokes new wave meets Matt & Kim style energy with swirling guitars. “Still Might” is an excellent example of how they meld all these styles together with great effect, as a very simple yet powerful song that has a great pace and weight to it. “Sunny Day” strongly evokes their Pains of Being Pure at Heart pop-rock side. And “Bones” is a great lumbering, lazy track that has a great hook to it.
They manage to blend together more noisy and alternative rock elements well with some great pop hooks to get a great mix of songs and sounds within this record. It certainly fits in very well with the Pains of Being Pure at Heart’s sound, but it definitely is more strongly influenced in sound by MBV than POPAH is. But there are slower, noisier tracks and then there are well-crafted, hooky gems in here as well. The one drawback of the album is that they are certainly dabbling in a style that is kind of hard to distinguish yourself in, and the songs are all great and have great hooks, but it is hard to write songs in this style and really make them pop and make them have weight and depth. For the most part they succeed though and this is a very strong album that is certainly worth checking out, and I imagine it will make for some good and loud live shows along the way.
