Meriwether – Make Your Move [Re-Release]

The instant you hear a band name that you’ve never heard before, they have a completely clean slate. That clean slate normally doesn’t last all that long as your brain intuitively begins making connections for the band. You instinctively connect the band to pre-programmed emotions based on numerous factors: who mentioned the band to you, what label the band is on, in what context was the band brought up, so on and so force. It makes it so that clean slate only remains clean for a few seconds.

However, you do get a few bands that surpass that few second mark and are able to hold off preconceived notions until the moment you press play on their CD. Meriwether was one of those bands. The re-release of Make Your Move (previously released in 2005 on GVE Records) conjured up absolutely no emotions right up until I press played; and once I did, I moaned.

The record kicks off with New Orleans, RIP; a song that opens up with a heavy breakdown but goes downhill the instant the vocals come into play. The delivery of the opening lines, I am a robot, here to systematically defeat all of the human race” brings up painful images of yet another Fall Out Boy/ Panic! At The Disco rip-off. Right there, I wrote them off, but continued to give them a fair listen nonetheless.

As the record progressed, the comparisons to emo icons like FOB and P!ATD began to fade; in fact, other than a few slip ups in vocal delivery, that resemblance is almost nonexistent throughout the rest of the record. Instead, Make Your Move moves towards more a radio-rock sound that has become equally as repetitive as the previously mentioned pop-emo outfits. Mixing it between Lies for The Liars era Used(although not nearly as good) with some Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and some Hedley thrown in (maybe a Hedley comparison is a tad harsh, but it is in there a bit), Make Your Moves seems to be suffering from an identity crisis, as if they’re not sure in what popular direction they should take. They even pull in the little effects – like the shotgun in Godzilla vs Rex Kwon Do in the [R]Octagon – to push that Usedinfluence even more.

The music is bearable, nothing new or exciting but bearable nonetheless. They go through the motions of heavier stuff mixed with some softer or acoustic stuff, creating a slightly scripted sound, but once again, still bearable. The vocals, however, are not. Too polished, too radio ready, and not personalized enough, Meriwether‘s vocal delivery sounds like an mixture of every radio rock vocalist out there and it becomes irritating quickly.

The fact of the matter though is that it wouldn’t be quite as bad if it was possible to actually sit through an entire play. With just thirteen songs on it, the record should not clock in at sixty minutes; but it does, and it drags. The record drags, the individual songs drags, and you’re left just jumping at the bone to press the stop button and switch to something else halfway through.

So despite opening up with a clean slate and being able to keep it clean past the few second mark, Meriwether‘s slate soon became murky and dirty as Make Your Move played through. It makes for a record I doubt I’ll pull out again anytime soon – if ever.