Modern Skirts
Catalogue of Gentleman
Self-released

This quartet from Georgia seems to want to straddle two ideals on this CD. On one side is the hope that they can pull off the sharp pop of someone like Ben Folds (this comparison could be because they use a piano as their primary instrument) and on the other is the soulless, radio friendly music of someone like Bruce Hornsby (this comparison comes from the generic sound of their songs). The mixture of the two ideals ends up as a batch of songs with some nice turns and sonic ideas but ultimately sounds as bland as a wall painted taupe.On the plus side, these four guys are very astute musicians. Their music doesn’t spiral off in silly directions and they are able to use instruments like a Rhodes piano and other keyboards to decent effect within particular songs. There are also lovely moments like the horn section that comes in during the midtempo heart string yanker “City Lights” and the piano and strings only track “Tonight Before You Were Sleeping” is quite a lovely song. The downside is that these moments are surrounded by songs that sound as if they were written with a computer program or under the sway of some mustache twirling manager who wants these guys to play it safe or else. There’s nothing wrong with music that isn’t “dangerous” or that is unchallenging, but when it all sounds so obvious like all the songs on here do, it becomes really hard to stomach.