A Faulty Chromosome describe themselves as the quiet kid that hides in the library at lunch time drawing pictures in the textbook margins. And since that makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, I was very curious to hear what that kid would sound like. And what it is, is a mix of shoe gazer, bargain basement electronics, and more typical pop-rock. Successful? Marginally.
Hey, I get it… writing music in the margins of textbooks, makes marginally good music. He he he, I’m just gonna have a good old laugh about that. But yeah, not amazing, but not bad. Very mediocre, because I have had enough marginal for today, not terrible, listenable, but just nothing really outstanding to grab you and make you go awesome. Like the kind of record if someone put on at a party you wouldn’t turn off, but at the same time I wouldn’t go, holy shit who is this or even if I saw it on a play list skip to them, but I wouldn’t be upset about having A Faulty Chromosome on the old stereo.
If I can cherry pick from the bands they compare themselves to I would say most accurately My Bloody Valentine, New Order and Belle and Sebastian, are the most evident influences. With the heaviest heaping being on the latter, though the guitar is really quite aggressive and awesome at times. Very swirly and trippy.
Yeah that definitely saves a lot of grace for this band, and really is what pulls this release out of the fires of absolute mediocrity. But overall the fault I think is that it’s just not exciting enough. Yeah just sticks too much in the middle of the road, could use some more energy or just generally weirdness to it. I’m afraid they will have to stay at their barely above minimum wage jobs for a little while yet, but hell what do I know, sometimes people eat up more ridiculous crap than this.
In fact I wouldn’t be too sad to see these faulty ones make a go of it, and make good on their expectations. But I’m not gonna call on the great horses to help them either. I feel pretty neutral about them. Really the only thing that grates on me is their so obviously contrived attempt at trying to depict themselves as weird. I mean the release really isn’t that strange; the lyrics from what I can make out of the sort of atonal nose breathing sounds pretty standard. I mean okay there are some definite lines that are trying to be bizarre, but it just isn’t really all that weird. It really just comes across as flat and textbook. Even one that has the margins drawn in.
