It may put up a pugnacious front, but at its heart, Visqueen’s Message to Garcia is an unabashedly sappy love-letter. Singer Rachel Flotard’s scrappy tales of love and heartbreak come to screaming life against a bigger-is-better musical backdrop, so that even a mournful, country-tinged piano-and-string ballad like “So Long” takes on epic, operatic proportions. The band’s obvious exuberance is infectious, but unfortunately they don’t quite manage to sustain it.
Message is sprinkled with a few tasty passages. “Summer Snow” capitalizes on the band’s larger-than-life aesthetic by punctuating its chorus with staccato waves of shimmery guitar. The melancholy “Beautiful Amnesia” makes the most of Flotard’s crystal-clear singing voice with an a cappella intro and some dense multi-tracking throughout. Both songs feature strong hooks, but more importantly they introduce complications into the melodies that feel sorely lacking elsewhere. Visqueen appropriates all the glitz of glam rock, but none of its sleaze, and without that crucial counter-point, the record flounders. A real shame, considering how even the smallest gestures — Flotard dragging out a note over the break-neck chorus of “Amnesia”; the herky-jerky, start-stop rhythm of “Snow” — add enough friction to make these songs really memorable.
Flotard has a manifest talent for crafting buoyant songs, but even the brightest compositions need a little shadow, and Message to Garcia’s squeaky-clean production only further serves to amp up the brightness at the expense of all contrast. It’s a fun record, but without any crucial elements of tension, the band’s big sound has no more lasting effect than a bottle rocket.
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