1,2,3
by Lauren Beck
1,2,3
Scared but Not That Scared
(Frenchkiss)
Scared but Not That Scared
(Frenchkiss)
New Heaven, the full-length debut by Pittsburgh duo 1,2,3, is what happens when a band knows too much for its own good. As drummer Josh Sickels notes of his band mate on their press release, “Nic [Snyder] listens to literally EVERYTHING, and I think you can hear that in his songs” (all-cap emphasis his, not ours). So we get a mixed bag of tracks whose lineage is all over the map: there are vague touches of Motown, Mark Bolan pop, waltzing piano, and white-boy whiskey soul sung in a voice less scratchy than Deer Tick’s John McCauley, but nothing that goes beyond light sketches of its source material.
Scared but Not That Scared, which takes its title track from New Heaven and bundles two more songs to form a quasi EP, is a happier-sounding alternative to its predecessor, though just as middling. There are some efforts to diverge from pure vanilla: a clanging xylophone, a tempo change three-quarters of the way into the opener, some yodels, a bit of whistling. The problem still lies in the extent of band’s resourcefulness. There’s a clear sense these guys have pored over decades’ worth of records and are looking for a way to a combine it all; unfortunately they get stuck barely skimming the surface. They look to add splashes of color throughout, but they’re just not that colorful—I’m all for whistling, but it’s not exactly novel—and it stunts the record’s ability to resonate beyond a simple, “Hm, this sounds nice.” There is “Machine, ” though, the one with the yodels, whose giddy-up beat and staccato percussion makes it sound like a love song for a farmer’s daughter. Scared but Not That Scared should serve to whet your appetite for their next step, or at least coerce you to listen to the full-length again. Unfortunately, it doesn’t, really.
