Dusted Reviews
Artist: Year Future Album: Year Future Label: GSL Review date: Jan. 19, 2004 |
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When confronted with a band whose player’s lineage includes some of the most influential acts to come out California in the ’90s, expectations are bound to overwhelm results. With GSL-founder Sonny Kay hailing from both the VSS and Angel Hair, and other bandmates playing in The Pattern and Dead and Gone, Year Future has enormous potential, too much really. Unfortunately, their new self-titled EP does little more than rehash many of the dance-punk trends and styles of today, albeit with the added bonus of Sonny Kay’s character occasionally shining through.
The aforementioned former bands were never that endowed with immense musical talent, but Angel Hair and the VSS thrived nonetheless on unrelenting energy. On Year Future, the skillset hasn’t improved and the nuances and emotions that made previous acts so successful are gone. The music on this release is trite, especially the guitar play of Rockey Crane, who sounds incredibly adolescent at times. The instrument interplay rarely gets going and remains bland and uninteresting. There are splices of guitarnoise thrown here and there, but it mostly comes off as highly masturbatory and pretentious; an unsuccessful attempt at an avant bent.
Although the instrumentation is sub-par, the vocals are not. Sonny’s still got it, and his delivery saves Year Future. His spastic jumps from scream to scream are still riveting and enjoyable. Lyrically, Sonny has his moments, although the simplistic rhyme schemes do come off a bit rushed.
Lacking unpredictability, Year Future disappoints, but EPs are tricky – you can’t accurately judge a band based on one, good or bad. This release is by no means a strong effort, but considering the personnel involved, there’s still hope for the Future.
By Andrew Sadowski
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