reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » When Tides Collide - We Lifted Up into the Night

It always seems that the home made / bad looking CD's we receive here at the office get sent my way. You know the ones: in a plain plastic sleeve, with some sort of photocopied art or home printer printed and jaggedly cut paper shoved inside, a burned CD with sticker art and a post-it note on the front that says something to the effect of "We need more press", all of course with not much further information and no return contact info. I always look at them and think to myself, "George let's not get jaded here, perhaps this is the next big breakout band, maybe it sounds like Nirvana's Bleach, or the first Misfits record, maybe it's the next Ramones or an early demo for what could be the next Smashing Pumpkins, but please god, don't make it another band that wants to be f***ing Creed..."

And I listen to them.

All of them that come to me.
 
The ones the other writers may be scared of. Some are honestly so bad that they never make it in the book or the web page, because the point of Reax is not to slash and drag people for making music, but to support those that have virtue apparent and need such support.  (Although some people do need a bad review for perspective now and again, here we don't relish in giving the bad review unlike some of our peers.)

 We Lifted Up into the Night was one of those demo / CD's that I feared to listen to. It broke every law that anyone sending in submissions to even the smallest magazine should abide by. It was guilty of being thrown together and home made with a post it note request for press, and at any regular music magazine it would have been filed in the recycle bin. Thank god I listened to it anyhow.

This is a sweet and calming dreamy record, that gets better as it progresses. Deftly picked reverbed banjo, slide guitars, emotive pianos and whispered vocals calm me somehow even after my 5th cup of espresso. This record has the earnest tonality of true confessions and insecure desires. It sounds good and feels good; it is good. I could name specific tracks and descriptions if only they were included in the thin plastic sleeve.

But I would certainly forgive any release that showed up on my step and sounded this great with this little. After all it is not about the look. It is and always should be about the music and no amount of glossy press photos, $5000 web pages and fake Wikipedia vanity biographies can make up for a lack of good song writing. Sometimes it is easy to forget that.

Thank you Carlos R. Anduiar & Chris Vasquez (When Tides Collide) for reminding me of this. I will listen to and enjoy your record, and I encourage others to find it and do so as well.