Cerulean

In 1991, I was fourteen years-old and living in California with my family. My older brother was back home living with us after completing basic training for the Army Reserves. We shared a room for about a year, and I was given access to his massive tape collection, a blessing which helped foster my ever-growing obsession with music.

It was at this time that I began graduating from my 80's roots. I'd been listening to a healthy dose of some of the more well-known "modern rock" bands of that period for a few years. Bands like The Cure, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and REM were my musical universe, ever since the same older brother introduced me to a path at least slightly removed from the dark side of mainstream radio with a mixtape of assorted Cure songs (with everything from Boys Don't Cry up to Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me) which he layed on me in the fifth grade. While those bands were certainly a decent foundation, I was naturally starting to want more variety.

So I dove into my brother's tape collection and began listening to some newer bands like Ride, Chapterhouse, and Lush--basically bands in the poppier end of the shoegaze pool and what is sometimes referred to as "dreampop." [It would be several years before I heard MBV and Slowdive, unfortunately.] There was something very fresh sounding about those bands. Effects heavy and with plenty of swirling distortion, it was like nothing I'd heard. I remember walking around my neighborhood listening to Whirlpool on my walkman and being filled with this crazy energy. I was inspired to make a music video for Ride's "Vapour Trail" with my parent's camcorder which consisted of me basically riding around on my bike and shooting the scenery and people in highspeed shutter mode. What can I say? I've always been really into bike safety.

LA's Cerulean reminds me a bit of that time in my musical life. The music of their 3rd album, No Sense In Waiting (2005, self-released) certainly mines some of the same territory of those early 90's bands. And though they tend toward the more compact, song-oriented rock side of things, they do convey a similar vibe. There's not much drifting feedback or jam-y parts going on here. All but one track is up-tempo. On the other hand, the album is laden with overdriven melodies and cascading guitars, with plenty of delay effects. A few even approximate something like the rush I feel when I hear those opening reverbed toms of "Decay," one of my favorite tracks from Ride's Nowhere. My one real gripe is what I can only describe as the somewhat heroic quality of the music and of the male vocals, which I find mildly annoying. That, and the album has a sound that is maybe a little too consistent. Otherwise, this a pretty solid record and well worth checking out. And hey--with all these bands still mining the 80's post-punk/new wave sound, these guys actually sort of sound ahead of their time. What irony?

Cerulean: "In Pictures"