Band Name: To Love and To Kill
Album Name: Stories of the Old Country
Best element: Good emotive qualities.
Genre: Ambient
Website: http://www.boatsandstars.com/geneq/tlatk.htm
Label name: Generic Equivalent (www.boatsandstars.com/geneq)
Band e-mail: N/a
(editor’s note: if there’s one thing Generic Equivalent Records does well, it’s release interesting music. Secondly, they release strange artwork that confuses. If any information is incorrect in this review, it is the fault of the editor.)
“A. No redos, take backs, try agains, make a stew.” This is the little information I had when I received this CD by To Love and To Kill. Little did I know how intricate yet simple this experience would be. The CD starts off with a speech from an inspiring poet: an explanation of his poems and his adventures through poetry. This also is the explanation of the whole CD and even To Love and To Kill as a band.
One of the easiest things to realize about the band is that it has no singer and lacks momentum. Song after song is perpetually the same, separated only by the occasional new guitar effect. I wouldn’t have known it was a new song had I not checked. Every song seems to consist of the same things: piano, guitar, and some effects. Even these are lacking new sounds and rhythms every song, sounding exactly as they did the song before and the song before. Feeble attempts at mixing the CD into something more diverse fall a little short at best. Some effects, instruments, and light talking in the background portray feelings well, but still lack difference. Their broad, yet simplistic style is hard to explain, although saying that it falls somewhere between the lines of classical and emo isn’t that bad of a description.
Right now, the feelings and instruments are there, but the thought and the emotion need to be expanded. With a singer, an occasional change in pace, and a definite style, everything would fall together for this band. With these minor changes and some more experience I believe this band could be going places; for now the fundamentals of something fantastic are in place.
-Tony Kennedy
independentclauses@hotmail.com