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Sunday, August 9, 2009

Review: Kind Monitor - Somebody Saves My Life Every Single Day


Kind Monitor - Somebody Saves My Life Every Single Day
2008, Kind Monitor

Joshua Aaron Guthals is the songwriting soul of Kind Monitor, a Brooklyn band that inspires thoughts of early REM and even Morrissey. Mixing melancholy with melancholy and a swirl of depression over soft, breeze melodies, Kind Monitor seems to be developing a following in the over-crowded New York City music scene. Kind Monitor's latest offering, Somebody Saves My Life Every Single Day, underscores this quirky sense of pop melancholy.

The EP opens with Sharks, an electronic New Wave offering with a Lo-Fi bent and a distinct diction deficit. I had an impossible time the lyrics on this song. The music itself is relatively non-descript; having little dynamic variability and lyrics that might as well be a voiceless vocal. Cairo is a somewhat non-descript tune that features some interesting violin work. Absorb gives the EP its name, rising to the level of insistent middle of road rocker for a repetition of the album title and then receding back into a state of placid quietude. Kind Monitor plods through I Love The Ending on the way to Somebody Saves, a somnolent and mildly depressed tune about merely existing. The EP closes out with End Of The Game, ending with the same dark and listless tenor Kind Monitor has maintained throughout.

Somebody Saves My Life Every Single Day plays more like a musical journal driven by severe depression. It is, frankly, a tough listen. Kind Monitor doesn't even save listeners with the snappy arrangements of a band like The Cure; proceeding in dirge-like fashion toward an ignominious end. There will be folks out there who like Somebody Saves My Life Every Day, but for me it was a tough listen.

Rating: 1.5 Stars (Out of 5)

You can learn more about Kind Monitor at http://www.kindmonitor.com/ or www.myspace.com/kindmonitor. You can purchase Somebody Saves My Life Every Single Day as either a CD or download through CDBaby.com.

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