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It is always difficult to estimate the value of an instrumental album. A lot of times, you realise that the vocal part in music can be a deciding factor in how you judge a band. Especially when it is a band like Billy Mahonie. This four-piece can't really be placed in one style of music. They start with an experimental, jazzy, kinda pop riff (with a trumpet) and build a song around it. This results in an almost Pink Floyd-ish kind of psychedelia. The climax comes in at around four minutes and can place itself in the sludge- and stoner-rock tradition for which bands like Monster Magnet are known for. After this, Billy Mahonie's music varies from noise ('Nacho Steals From Work' and 'Dusseldorf'), light pop music ('Lothe' and 'The Day Without End'), reggae ('Hey Mr. Jukes'), country ('I, Heston'), or acoustic music ('False Calm'). But their emphasis lies on a noisy kind of laid-back pop, larded with distorted guitars, staccato riffs, and a building tension (e.g. songs like the afore-mentioned 'Dusseldorf', 'Simple Solutions Seldom Are', and 'Terylene'). You could chart them as some sort of a public-friendly Sonic Youth or Jesus Lizard.
But that's the band's problem. Sometimes they sound too edgy to be a nice pop band, but at the same time they're too brave to be a real instrumental noise band. And that's where a singer could have untied some knots. Now, songs like 'Keeper's Drive', 'The Day Without End', and 'Bres Lore' just sound like ongoing jams without any direction, and 'False Calm' turns out as a tune for a honey advertisement. Billy Mahonie sound like a band that can't make up their mind which direction they must go in their songs. The band could make pointy pop songs that claim attention. The ideas are there, and they master their instruments very well, but the band miss the finishing touch to really create a tension in their songs and therefore the power to really grasp their listeners. Now, the music on this CD can only be classified as background music. Good background music, that is. But it still is background music. And did you ever remember background music?
http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/billy-mahonie/what-becomes-before/1415/
Meer Billy Mahonie op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/billy-mahonie
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