Atlantic
Indie Pop, 2015
If I were a few decades younger, the Night Terrors of 1927 main vocalist Jarrod Gorbel will be someone I’d love to smoke weed and write sad, anguished songs about superficial angst with. He has that look, if you know what I mean, complete with all those tattoo sleeves that scream gentrified poser pretending to be some hippie bad boy type. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, as his voice is like a mix of that dude from The Cure crossed with a hint of Bono before Bono turned into a hypocritical douchebag-cum-sellout corporate shill. Mr Gorbel and Blake Sennett, both fixtures in the indie pop-rock scene, formed Night Terrors of 1927 apparently on a lark and Everything’s Coming Up Roses is the sole outing before they broke up in 2017.
Seriously, this is one of the best The Cure tribute bands I’ve across ever since The Killers. There is an exuberance in all the tracks here that makes me feel young again, to not give any effs and risk hip fracture by dancing around the place to these tunes. It Would Be an Honor is the perfect feel good anthem to blast out loud from the speakers of any vehicle, and if it reminds me of The Killers’ Human, hey, they are all cloned from Robert Smith’s DNA, so whatever, just go with the flow, people.
Novocaine is a pained anthem full of misery and angst, and it’s really lovely – I feel like I’ve just taken a few deep inhalations from that hookah thingy that I never own (honest) and are now floating on some clouds of someone’s torment. That chorus is pretty inspirational – I feel like I’m some waif-like supermodel swaying slowly in the music video of this song, doing a twirl before the camera closes up on my sad pout, right before I quietly mouth to the camera, “Save me… for the ugliness…”
Mind you, not everything here is made of guitars and pained faux hippie angst. Perfect Day is one of the pure pop tunes here, but nothing really beats When You Were Mine, their collaboration with the twin sisters Tegan and Sera, which is the most sell-out commercial and ironically the best song in this album. That song captures everything about modern day relationships perfectly: hooking up for superficial reasons, breaking up due to petty conflicts, and being unable to get over the break-up.
Everything’s Coming Up Roses is everything a starter indie pop album should be, and I mean this in a good way. It’d be great for kids who find The Cure too scary-looking, and hence, this one will help ease their transition from indie pop to indie rock. Well, unless they take a detour and become a Hurts fan, on the way to discovering the Pet Shop Boys and Boy George, I suppose. Still, all is good, as there are many old classics to be discovered again.
