slow-dog.concert

06 Jan 2000 - Sudsy Malone's , Cincinnati OH
Promenade

the show
So I made it to Sudsy's for Promenade's CD release party, and it was well worth my time. For those of you who've never been there, Sudsy's is the only laundromat/bar/concert venue I know of. It was about 10:30 when I walked in, and the place was pretty crowded.

I won't spend too much time on the show, as I will devote it to the CD instead, but the show was good. Not their best performance, but definitely entertaining, and since all of their friends were there, the crowd was pretty into it. They played for maybe an hour and a half or longer, and pretty much played everything off of the new album along with some other (older?) material.

the album
The show ended and I picked up my copy of their new CD Save the Radio and headed for home. Popping it into my CD player, I listened to it all the way through on the drive back to Dayton, and was somewhat disappointed. Not much mind you, because it was pretty good. My main complaint was that the vocals were whisper-thin, the bass was non-existent, and the guitar didn't have the presence and voice that it does at their shows. The songs were the same poppy numbers, but they just didn't impact like they should

Then I realized I was an idiot--I had turned the bass way down on my car stereo for some reason a while back, and it was still way down. The next listen was definitely a much improved experience. For a self-produced (with coproducer Jeff Monroe), self-released effort, it shows incredible polish, in a good way. The songs are intelligent and infectiously poppy. There's a hook on every song, but Promenade also took the time to craft complete songs around the hooks. They branch out beyond verse-chorus-verse arrangments and try to do some different things, and it pretty much all comes together here.

Now the album isn't perfect. Even with my bass at normal levels, the vocals come across a little thin as does the guitar work. This is unfortunate, since Scott Cunningham on vocals and Steve Sauer on guitar do a great job live, it just doesn't quite come across on the album.

But it's not just me who likes this album. In this week's reveiew, Citybeat's Mike Breen calls the first song, "pop music as Radiohead envisioned it." Promenade aren't going to be the elusive "American Radiohead", but they should continue to pump out pop gems, and hopefully, soon, the rest of America will start listening.