Stereotyperider – Songs In the Key of F and U

It took me quite a few listens to SITKOFAU to figure out just who the hell Stereotyperider reminded me of. Know what I mean? It’s one of those records that can drive one absolutely batshit until you figure out what that association is. Then once you do figure it out, you can’t, like, unhear it. Stereotyperider’s just seems to be one of those bands.

The first song, “We Are Dinosaurs”, has a reasonably nice punch to it and is unfortunately probably the best song on the record. Those fat guitars buried under earnest, sung-not-screamed vocals and some decently punchy rhythms; it’s nice. There’s a certain slightly rocking quality to SITKOFAU that should be acknowledged – and yet, in a hell of a strange dichotomy, the songs seem reasonably dynamic without actually going anywhere. The album’s just… there. And all the while I was trying to get a handle on just who the hell they reminded me. Samiam? Something off an old Drive-Thru or Asian Man comp? I couldn’t figure it out.

Stereotyperider’s a band that’d most likely be pretty great live, but there’s just something a little too pedestrian about it all on a recording – for every great and all too brief moment (the nice staccato guitar jabs on “Twon Song”, for instance), they manage to throw out some longwinded spaced-out jam like the ethereal instrumentation of  “First Time Caller.” It comes across as background noise for the most part, and yet all the while I’m wondering who the hell they remind me of.

So, yeah. There just wasn’t much momentum throughout the record. One of those bands that, despite the fact that all the songs sound somewhat varied, nothing really jumps out and puts its hands around your throat. There’s no real jaw-dropping moments of musicianship or passion, they don’t seem to reach any sort of crescendo. It’s a great recording, they’re obviously a bunch of talented dudes. The musicianship is top-notch, and yet this seems to somehow works against them – everything is just a little too clean, a little too static. So it was when I got to the middle of the record, “Problem Solved”, for about the millionth time that the tumblers finally clicked into place.

Oh, right. Stereotyperider reminds me of Three.

More specifically, Stereotyperider reminds of Side A of Three’s only full-length, Dark Days Coming, especially in the vocal department. Which is interesting – I mean, I’ve been in bands that’ve been compared to groups that I’ve never seen, records I’ve never heard. It’s frustrating sometimes. I don’t think that Steretyperider are huge Three fans or that Dark Days Coming is really that great of a record, much less one that a band’s able to draw an album’s worth of inspiration from. And yet, there it is, at least to this reviewer – they sound like an updated, modernized version of Three, with the folk-rock undercurrent being replaced with a more proficient but also more vapid and hollow indie rock quality to it. There’s just this lack of spark – it’s an okay listen when you’re doing the dishes, but when it comes to sitting down and listening to it for the sake of listening, it’s a pretty big disappointment.