An Angle – We Can Breathe Under Alcohol

Conor Oberst should take a page from Tom Waits book. See, Waits hates commercials and would never let anyone use his songs in any ads. But some companies never accept the answer “no”, so instead hire a sound-alike to record a song for the ad and make everyone think that it is Waits himself. Of course, this doesn’t make Waits very happy, so like any good American, he sues them. This past April he suedOpel in Denmark, Sweden and Finland for using a sound-alike in an ad. In 1994 he sued his own record company for licencing his song “Heartattack and Vine” to a Levis commercial. In ’93 it was Frito Layin the USA who felt Waits wrath. Audi, Germany were sued in 2000 for using a soundalike song and Lancia in Italy had a similar case.And oddly enough, Waits wins most of the lawsuits. So if he can get money for companies using a sound-alike for their ads, I’m sure Oberst could get a fair load of cash in a settlement from An Angle. After all, all Kris Anaya is is a Oberst rip-off.

An Angle received some instant fans along with some instant enemies after signing to Drive-Thru Records a few months ago. And now, here is Anaya with his new full length, We Can Breathe Under Alcohol, a ten track album of Bright Eyes influenced Americana folk rock. The songs are slow and long, only one song is under four minutes long. Anaya’s vocals are strong, but soon become whiny and excessive. There’s some evident skill here, but the songs tend to just become a blur and quite boring after a while. There is rarely a climatic point, where the song actually goes toward something, makes the listeners feel a bit of emotion within them. The songs just flow, but don’t really ask to be heard, just rather quite trite.

And what makes it worse, is that even though An Angle is a one man group, it takes so many more people to make it complete. There’s fourteen other musicians on the recording, including a mini orchestra, that make the songs complete. Pretty much every instrument is played by another musician, meaning they could’ve cut the credits list in half if they had just used the same person to record the songs, or maybe Anaya should be a little but more like Oberst and learn the instruments for himself.

I’m not a huge Bright Eyes fan, so this blatant Bright Eyes wanna-be really does nothing but bore me. The songs are too mellow, too generic, too long, and just too boring. I really don’t know what Drive Thru was thinking.