Evaline – Postpartum Modesty, A Portrait Of Skin

I hate it when the biggest selling point of a CD is the producer. While the producer does play a big role, it shouldn’t be the selling point, because they are in the background. Furthermore, they always use the wrong producers as selling points. Rarely do you see a sticker saying “produced by Ryan Greene!” or “Bill Stevenson” or “Gavin Brown”, all well known and respected producers. Instead, when you see CDs like the new Motion City Soundtrack you see a giant sticker proclaiming “produced by Mark Hoppus of Blink-182” and really why does that matter? Yeah, he was a good musician, but does that mean he can produce? Hell, that was the first time he ever produced anything – but it was still somehow a selling point even though no one knew if Hoppus could produce or not. Sadly, Evaline is doing the same sort of thing, but instead of Hoppus it is Quinn Allman of The Used who produced and discovered this band – and once again, why should that matter? Allman has never produced anything before this, still it remains the biggest selling point and the fact is if it wasn’t for that selling point and promotional push, no one would ever know who Evaline is.

The oddly named Postpartum Modesty, A Portrait Of Skin is a fair collection of what you can expect from Evaline now and in the future. With six long songs carrying the band’s uniquely polished indie-rock tunes ala Working Title, Evaline doesn’t try to hide anything or strike it big with one major single. Every song on it is well written and relatively catchy enough to be a well received single for the masses. The entire EP works well together, without any particular standout track, it’s plainly evident that the band put their effort together on every single song instead of just a few and then fillers (who wants filler on a six song EP?).

With heavy synthesized pop, laced with keyboards and the occasional viola, Evaline are far from being remotely Used like and falls instead under the atmospheric indie-rock genre, that’s if you were reaching for a genre to label them with. Instead they borrow from the likes of Circa Survive for their smooth, harmonious melodies (not to mention Richard Perry’s vocals which sound very similar to Anthony Green) while taking the atmospheric pop-sensabilities of the UK’s Muse.

Still, while the album is pretty unique, the songs tend to drag on a bit and soon become repetitive, not to mention forgettable. There’s definite skill visible here, but it’s few and far between with the remaining good, but not outstandingly so. In reality, the simple fact is this: no one would care about or be remotely interested in this band if it wasn’t for Allman discovering them and promoting them like crazy because in two weeks, you’ll forget all about it and be on the next wave of upcoming bands.