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IO ECHO
ministry of love [IAMSOUND RECORDS] Imagine yourself at your favorite Chinese restaurant. As you sit amongst golden statues and red tapestries, traditional Asian music fills the air. Now imagine you’re at a Matt and Kim or Peter Bjorn and John Concert, jamming out to cheerful indie vocals meshed with eclectic percussion: whistles, bells, and sweet drum riffs. Combine the two, and you get IO Echo’s first full-length album, Ministry of Love. Launching their first single in 2010, their first EP in 2012, and finally, their first album this year, IO Echo is relatively new to the music scene. Yet this hasn’t stopped the group from rising through the indie music ranks at an impressive pace. Providing a unique blend of dreamy synth-pop, upbeat percussion, and Asian elements, (including the sounds of authentic Japanese kotos and Chinese violins) IO Echo’s sound has impressed many well-known artists in the industry. As of Fall 2013, IO Echo has already opened for Nine Inch Nails, Garbage, and Florence + The Machines- plus they’ve performed at Coachella and Lollapalooza. Not too shabby for a band that only just released their first full-length album. Ministry of Love kicks off with “Shanghai Girls”, the band’s most well known song. Ioanna Gika’s dreamy vocals are melded to traditional Asian melodies, creating an excellent representation of the band’s
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unique sound. However, the song’s tempo is rather slow, and it lacks the peppy percussion prominent in many of their other tracks. That’s not to say that IO Echo doesn’t perform well with slower-tempo tracks: “Outsiders” and “Berlin, It’s All a Mess” are two excellent, slower songs that demonstrate IO Echo’s range of tempo-ability. But overall, upbeat ‘indie’ percussion is what makes many of IO Echo’s songs so great, and “Shanghai Girls” is somewhat lacking in this department. If you’re going to listen to just a few tracks on Ministry of Love, choose “Draglove”, and “Ministry of Love”. Both of these songs are excellent: upbeat, filled with cheerful indie vocals, Asian instrumentals, and fantastic percussion moving the beat along. I think I even hear a ratchet being used at points- former percussionists; you all know what I’m talking about! Ministry of Love is an extremely impressive first album by an equally impressive, fresh new band. IO Echo produces a mesh of musical elements that by themselves seem familiar and distinct, but combined, creates an entirely unique sound. ali GRIMES
ST LUCIA
when the night [COLUMBIA] A quote from Juno came to mind as I began listening to When the Night: “It sucks! Its just noise.” Ellen Page’s feelings towards Sonic Youth mimicked my immediate reaction to the albums first track, The Night Comes Again. The second thought was, “I hope this gets better.” Sorry to disappoint you, but it really doesn’t. When the Night takes a musical field trip back three decades to remind us why music from the 1980’s stayed in the 1980’s. Their first full-length album shows basically no musical growth from their EP that was released in early 2012. Playing St. Lucia - EP and When the Night back-to-back, one has trouble distinguishing when one album ends and the other begins. While St. Lucia – EP was praised for its “new and refreshing sound,” I failed to see anything “new and refreshing” about something my dad probably played in his college band in 1985.
Each track sounds like a disco-y continuation of the last with a lot of synthesizer and tacky messages about love that take you back to the school dance in Napoleon Dynamite with the painfully awkward slow dances to “Forever Young.” The album becomes more and more agonizing to listen to as it goes on with a lack of musical diversity and overly lengthy songs. The title track of St. Lucia’s debut album, for instance, drags out for a cringe-worthy seven minutes and 21 seconds. That’s seven minutes and 21 seconds too long, in my opinion. If your dream is to be trapped in an 80’s movie with John Cusack’s boombox, than this is the perfect album for you. Otherwise, steer clear. “Its just noise.” megan OPPERMAN
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