Divers – Hello Hello

I have been told two things over the years by teachers and editors alike: 1. write what you know and 2. find your voice.

The first point is easy enough. Writing about what you know, be it water filters or punk rock, is easy if you know the topic well enough to chuck out 500-words in 15 minutes. The second, finding your voice, is pretty rough. You gotta think about who you are with regards to the topic, your space within the community, your critique and its legitimacy with what has been written before. Most importantly, you gotta build on what came before and be different. You never want to be Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac or any other white dudes who are dead in your writing. You gotta be different and poignant. Never be your heroes, you gotta branch out and find out what you are about.

Portland-based Divers replicates the sounds of many rock and roll vets in an amalgamation that is their debut album Hello Hello. It’s nothing groundbreaking–it sounds like Arcade Fire crashed into Bruce Springsteen on a back road deep in the Pacific-Northwest. Then The Gaslight Anthem fell off a cliff and into the mangled mess of “whoa-ohhs” and guitar solos.

It is not that I dislike Hello Hello, it is a perfectly good debut album, but there is nothing surprising about it. Very clean and well produced. The guitars really drive the album in a way that is reminiscent of The ’59 Sound. “Lacuna” would fit within the purview of Brian Fallon. “Tracks” has an Arcade Fire feel and I hear Bloc Party of all bands in the drums.

See what I mean? It’s a mixture of great bands before them, but Divers needs to find their own voice.  The musical influences are there, but I want to know what it means to them. Like they say on “Breathless” “We are who we think we are.” Now it’s time to tell everyone else.