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Avg: 4.0 (60 ratings)
- Date Released: October 25, 2005
- Genre: Rock/Pop
- Style: Rock
- Label: Startime International / Vagrant
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We Say...
Tom Vek is young: 23 years young, debut album recorded in his parents' London garage young. Youth grounds We Have Sound, but it is not necessarily an innocent record.
The album is defined by its raw, anxious and unprocessed sound (see: garage), matter-of-fact lyrics and a collection of mostly declarative song titles (see: youth, before blacks and whites fade to grays). His immediate surroundings — love, fame and post-adolescent/pre-adult ennui — inform his songwriting. Though much more bare-boned, this direct, even abrupt, approach is reminiscent of contemporary and fellow countryman Mike Skinner of The Streets. Vek is world-weary in a way only twentysomethings can be; though his voice often sounds sardonic and remote, the electro-pop beats, rhythmic repetitions and insights that pepper his straightforward expressions reveal a pervasive and infectious energy. No matter how tired he gets, there’s always room for one more car ride, one more party, one more love song.
In all of its lo-fi glory, We Have Sound — loyal to but different from both rock and electronica — is a collection of found noises cobbled together from Vek’s musical forbearers. He draws obvious inspiration from Television, P.I.L. and Talking Heads (the latter being most apparent on “Nothing But Green Lights”). But Vek recognizes his derivativeness: the instantly gratifying “I Ain’t Saying My Goodbyes” affects a pre-emptive strike against the clock's inevitable tolling of his 15 minutes.
And just when Vek seems to have popped in for some aural vintage shopping, he turns out “If I Had Changed My Mind” — an angry, almost irritated love song whose washboard guitar is punctuated by high-pitched clatter and Vek’s frustrated falsetto — a track that modestly suggests maybe we haven’t heard everything before. -
They Say...
A brash mix of indie rock and dance, Tom Vek's debut album, We Have Sound, manages to make this fusion of styles sound organic instead of opportunistic. Having explored and experimented with alt-rock in his early teens and electronica as he neared his twenties, Vek knows both styles inside out, and his incorporation of both into his own music feels completely instinctive. Vek recorded We Have Sound in his parents' garage on an old reel-to-reel recorder, and he gets a remarkably "live" feel on his recordings, especially considering that he's essentially a one-man band. The louder songs, such as album opener "C-C (You Set the Fire in Me)," sound like they were recorded in concert or at a party, creating an interesting tension with the more polished electronic atmospheres that dominate later tracks such as "On the Road." Vek has been compared to LCD Soundsystem, Beck, Bloc Party, and the Rapture, but the main similarity between him and these artists is that they're all unafraid of playing with rock and electronic idioms until they come up with their own styles. Although "The Lower the Sun" does sound a little bit like Beck attempting to make Odelay on a Stereopathetic Soul Manure budget, "I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes" puts more emphasis on the "punk" part of dance-punk than Bloc Party could. However, with lyrics like "Cover"'s "It's your Stanley knife smile cutting into me" and the elastic song structure on "A Little Word in Your Ear," Vek shows that he's a confident enough songwriter to put his own spin on these sounds. We Have Sound isn't perfect: some of the songs, like "If You Want" and "If I Had Changed My Mind," still sound unfinished and unfocused and a little too close to garage-made demos. And even though Vek mixes electronic and rock elements fluently, sometimes his application of dance's elongated, loopy feel to indie rock sounds just ends up sounding repetitive. Still, when Vek is capable of songs as good as the slow-building buzz of "Nothing But Green Lights" and the lovely, not quite folktronica ballad "That Can Be Arranged," it's easy to forgive some of We Have Sound's more awkward moments. This is a strong debut from an artist who just needs a little more focus to be brilliant.
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| 01. |  |
C-C (You Set the Fire in Me) |
4:33 |
|
| 02. | |
I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes |
3:45 |
|
| 03. | |
If You Want |
3:47 |
|
| 04. | |
A Little Word in Your Ear |
3:51 |
|
| 05. | |
If I Had Changed My Mind |
3:37 |
|
| 06. | |
The Lower the Sun |
3:37 |
|
| 07. | |
Cover |
3:36 |
|
| 08. | |
Nothing But Green Lights |
4:17 |
|
| 09. | |
On the Road |
4:11 |
|
| 10. | |
That Can Be Arranged |
3:50 |
|
10 Total Tracks, 39:04 Total Length
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Credits
- Tom Rixton - Producer // Tom Rixton - Engineer // Tom Rixton - Drum Programming // Tom Rixton - Mixing // Tom Rixton - Audio Production // Tom Vek - Mixing // Tom Vek - Musician // Ade Pressly - Engineer // Ade Pressly - Digital Editing // Ade Pressly - Editing // Ade Pressly - Mixing
-
Other Details
- Instrument:
- Vocals
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