Craig’s Brother – E.P.IDEMIC

I was excited for this album. Although I had never heard one song from the California natives known as Craig’s Brother, I still wanted this album. Why? Simply because of the ironic name and amazing CD cover. I though that the title, E.P.DEMIC was a very smart, catchy, tongue-in-cheek name for an EP; and I just LOVED the album cover; the glowing mosquitoe looked amazing. For some reason, I expectedCraig’s Brother to be a pop-punk band. When I finally did get a copy of E.P.IDEMIC, I couldn’t say that I was surprised by what I heard, but I was slightly disappointed.

The five song EP starts off with 10,000 Miles, and what you hear on this track is pretty much what you hear throughout the entire EP. The songs are driven by power guitar riffs with vocals that aren’t whiny, or polished, or young boyish. They are more nasally then that. With three backup vocalists, you get a bit of a triple layered sound that you wouldn’t get from the one vocalist. Unfortunately, the vocals never really push themselves too much. They seem to be content at where they stand and don’t really change from one line to another or one track to another. They do go that extra step in E.PISSDUMBOLOGY, which really helps the song stick out more then the others. They tend to be very clear, which is a plus if you want to sing along, but they aren’t immensely catchy so you do need the lyrics sheet to help you with that. Like the vocals, Craig’s Brother doesn’t have much diversity in the musical department. There isn’t much different in the guitar riffs, which doesn’t help in the diversity factor either.

I do believe that Craig’s Brother will come up in a lot of my music conversations in the next couple of months, because of the amazing CD cover. I’ll talk about it, bring it out, and play it. But it doesn’t really grab me that much, it is just your basic pop-punk.