When you think of your favorite indie group's first album, it's usually something you own just because you like the band and want to own all of their recordings. Usually they have a handful of brilliant moments that foreshadow their later more realized music, but not something you would consider their strongest. I was a little shocked when I first heard My Hotel Year's first album, The Composition of Ending and Phrasing. I had seen the band open for another band, and bought their CD. For a bands first album, especially an unheard of band that so far doesn't tour far from their central Florida area, it is an especially strong release.
The music effortlessly mixes the edge, intelligence, and desperate emotion of bands like Jawbox and Braid with the fun introspective straight-ahead punk of a band like The Get Up Kids, never becoming cheesy; and though at times you can hear influences, they manage to make it their own and come across as original.
The album opens strong with "6a.m.," a great moving song which leads straight into the very desperate sounding "If I Only Spoke Russian." The band plays with the soft/loud dynamic on songs like "Between Little Things" and "Fashion for Monks," which is easily the best song on the album, with it's strikingly beautiful clean jazzy guitar with soft vocals, then exploding into loud distorted guitars. Even when they go into familiar emotional indie territory with a song like "Sunrise at Sixteen," a sad rocker about someone wishing for their girlfriend to return with mushy baring-it-all lyrics, somehow they endear to you without becoming annoying or cheesy.
The striking thing about this album is it stands out very much as an album rather than just a collection of songs. The lyrics are intelligent, and sometimes cryptic, leaving the subject matter of the songs open to interpretation. The album closes with the stunningly beautiful title track, complete with piano and acoustic guitar. With this first release, My Hotel Year have put together a very strong, diverse album, one which I found myself wanting to listen to all at once, and then wanting to listen to over again. 1. http://www.myhotelyear.com/
2. file://localhost/home/u4/tinymixtapes2/html/musicreviews/musicreviews.htm
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