Emotionalpunk.com
Media Review
Music Quality: 5.0
Production: 6.0
Originality: 4.0
Tracklisting
2. Elements and Principles
3. User Guide
4. Teeth Like Chalk
5. Autopsy is a Dying Practice
6. Seams
7. DRV
Courtesy Blush sound a lot like The Fall of Troy in that they write songs that twist and turn, never content with being predictable, and always keeping the listener on edge. Yet, while TFOT have made the confusion and shambolic nature of their music into a kind of art, Courtesy Blush let it muddle and slow the music down. Sure, there are moments when the walls of sound and sheer noise of their music is compelling, even clever, but more often then not, the band gets lost in its own attempts at creating dense, complex songs.
The opener of “The Faces EP,” “Eight Circuits,” is a noisy, abrasive post-hardcore jam that highlights everything the band does well: combining abrasive walls of guitars with melodic and shouted vocals. The song serves as an adrenaline rush, building expectations high for the rest of the album that are unfortunately let down. For the rest of the album, the band is too concerned with the structural trickery of their songs rather than the songs themselves. This causes the rest of the EP to be burdened with mid-tempo rock songs, the guitars twisting back into one another, never finding any sort of consistent hook or pathos.
The songs begin to bleed into one another, never fulfilling the promises made in the opening minutes of the album, making it seem like the EP is comprised of only two songs: the opener and the rest. Of course, like the last TFOT album, Courtesy Blush create moments of greatness in the otherwise dull and forgettable other songs on the EP. For instance, the build-up to the non-existent chorus on “Autopsy is a Dying Practice” is loud, fast, and for a change, interesting to listen to, seeming to find the hooks and rhythm they had been looking for the past ten minutes of the album.
These moments, while good in themselves, do not merit spending money on the EP. Courtesy Blush is a good band that, with a little more experience, could become a band truly worth listening to. They need to trim down their songs, cutting down on the build-up and the filler and get to the catharsis their music suggests that they are trying to reach. Until then, “Faces” is just an EP to check out on Myspace and PureVolume.