JESSIE REIMER
Staff Writer
Local indie rock band, Moving to France, hopes to move to mainstream status with the release of its self-titled debut album. Although the band has a strong foundation to build from, the band fails to offer a unique or groundbreaking sound.
The band mirrors most other aspiring indie rock genre artists, and this curses the band with its greatest problem. Even with Moving to France’s musical talent, the band offers nothing to set them apart from the thousands of other indie rock bands that attempt to storm the scene.
Moving To France has gained popularity through MySpace music publicity, accumulating more than 50,000 plays to date. The band’s music has also circulated the radio waves in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal and New Orleans. Continuing on their performance-charged publicity kick, Moving to France will play at the Roxy on March 3.
Band members say artists such as Radiohead, David Bowie, The Killers and The Cure are their influences, but their sound scarcely relates to the styles of these artists. Each one of the influential bands listed above resonate a musical approach all their own, but Moving to France has not yet achieved a strong individual sound.
On “Damaged Circuitry” and “Laissez Faire World,” Moving to France echoes the same haunting and quirky tone as British indie rock superstars, Muse. With more than a decade more of experience, Muse oozes with an original talent and revolutionary method to their music. Perhaps after a few more years of experience, Moving to France will develop an innovative technique and receive the same praise.
Moving to France formed in the L.A. area two years ago. Band members include Michael Edelstein on guitar and lead vocals, Greg Nortman also on guitar, Adam Reese on bass and backing vocals and Joe Zabielski on drums and percussion. Zabielski also creates the digital mixing for the tracks.
After the preliminary writing and composing process, the band began their aggressive attack on the local rock concert scene. Moving to France has played such venues as the Troubadour, Viper Room and Spaceland. The band has also traveled outside of the area to venues in New Orleans, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Music is about an experience, but a composition must first work to draw a listener into the song. The 12-track album noisily strings together repetitive vibes and hooks that are not quite catchy enough. The busy nature of the instrumentation makes it difficult to focus on the music as a whole. Fortunately for Moving to France, rare moments like the sweet lead guitar solo toward the end of “Blue” hint at a hope for musical growth.
With puzzling lyrics like “Doves and the Hawks/ Swim in the pond” in “The Boom Boom Sound,” it is tough to engage in the music. Lyrics like “The boom boom sound is all I hear” resemble the youthful cries of a 5-year-old and do not conform to any sort of profound proclamation. No one can take the phrase “boom boom” seriously.
The ambivalent and abstract nature of the lyrics makes it hard to relate to what the band is trying to say. With storytelling, abstracts communicated through concrete images create a deeper and more relatable end product. Occasionally, lead singer Edelstein captures listeners with an insightful line or two such as “I think I’m lost/ Or maybe just sad” and “It’s not a ghost town/ But it’s a soulless town,” which happen to be from that “boom boom” song.
Following along in an ‘emptiness of the world theme,’ the track “Laissez Faire World” discusses the lack of a helping hand in a world that does not care “if you make it through.”
The song criticizes the world’s inability to simply know someone’s name.
Despite his melodic vocals, Edelstein’s voice fails to stand out among the array of talented musicians in the industry. His voice is full of the stereotypical angst-driven emotional wailing of the indie rock persuasion, without the captivating closeness and vulnerability of artists like Muse lead singer Matthew Bellamy.
Moving To France demonstrates exceptional musical talent; the band just need to find a sound that will define itself in the musical world. The group’s dynamic style needs to find a balance between melodic lines, instrumental tracks and emotional enthrallment to advance past amateur status. Listen to the band’s music on myspace.com/movingtofrance.
02-22-2007