vee device
Autobiography Of A Dying Band
www.rockymountainbullhorn.comIf bluegrass and indie rock were two people, they wouldn’t be first on each other’s speed dial. In one corner, bluegrass puts its emphasis on technical prowess and tradition, while indie rock invites a more unlearned aesthetic and globs of postmodern irony. But, if there were a town where the two could get along, it would be Fort Collins. Locals Vee Device put the mix to good use on their latest, Autobiography of a Dying Band.
Like most generalizations, calling the band’s sound indie grass (or something like it) would be too simple. But, listening to their sprawling, 20-song release, you do get a feeling that this group is taking the afternoon of banjos, guitars, violins and mandolins that we know and warping it, making it strangely new.
Thematically, Dying Band seems to revolve around the difficulties of creating art in our saturated information age, or keeping people together, or a hedgehog infiltration. The musicality is impressive: harmonies and brightly picked strings fly around lead vocalist vee’s semi-twang; pop melodies arise that tend to grow on you with each spin. What makes the album robust, however, is the band’s will to be weird. Field recordings and outtake mumbles spice up interludes, and the lyrics carry oddities and surprise — a song that sounds like a hootenanny crashed by a brass section is actually about alien abduction. Other tunes carry fresh insight: "To Help You Read My Mind," begins with the lines, "I’m shooting mind bullets/ ‘zoom’ is the sound that they make."
The album art, which features fictional music reviewers like David Goliath calling the record "astounding" and the band "revolutionary," feels like attention-grubbing gone awry, but as the music stands, Dying Band is an inspired release: exciting in its technicality turned, twisted and pulled.
The Bullhorn -- Thursday, August 4 2005
By Elliott Johnston