The Minor White – Old Theatrics

You can often form an opinion on a new album from the first twenty seconds of the opening track. This important measure of time will allow you to get a slight feel of the music, and provide you with material to praise, or material to slate in your head. Regardless of whether you're a 'three listens at least' person or not, people by nature are quick to judge, it happens to everyone. Take Old Theatrics by The Minor White for example. The first track 'Old Fashioned Drinker (In A River Of Glue)' throws out an intro worthy of a Cursive album, all dark strings muttering and a vintage piano rising up to a crescendo. After this, we're soothed by a relaxed vocal melody, which takes us by the hand and gently walks us through the rest of the song. But it's the first 30 seconds that really stuck, a strong start which impressed and promised great, progressive things. So I wandered through the first listen of Old Theatrics still under the impression that this was an amazing album. And now I'm at the end of a few more run-throughs, I can't help but get the impression that i may have been deceived slightly. This is still a great album, but it's sadly sometimes hamstrung by it's own desires to have a strong pop element.The Minor White are great at creating songs like 'Pale Ideas', that are languid, slow moving and haunting. 'Pale Ideas' shares similarities with earlier track 'Vaudeville' in that as a piece it's really engaging and catchy, but doesn't cross too far into mainstream territory. As soon as the sound starts to sway and move further from the original idea, the pace is slowed right back down and brought under control. Further down the line, 'Most Things' threatens to pull us into a singalong, but instead leads us to another break with heavily processed claps nicely building up the pace. And then the big chorus? Nope, guitar solo. It's things like that that really give The Minor White it's own special appeal. A flat refusal to give the listener what they're expecting is always hard to pull off succesfully, but The Minor White are experts in their field.It's when Old Theatrics tries to go for the hook that it begins to fail. Those great first 30 seconds of 'Old Fashioned Drinker....' are sadly utterly ruined by the main vocal refrain. It just sounds a bit cheesy really, all told. 'Money For Puppies' has a strong opening minute, but the chorus is really quite wet and more reminiscent of the current wave of british piano butchering half-band bastardisations (Keane). A drippy slap in the face of what is actually quite a nice tune, but thankfully it clocks in at under 3 minutes, so it's bearable. The Minor White do what they do so well, its sometimes a bit baffling to listen to songs like 'Fever Scene', which sound like a slightly out of tune Ryan Adams song. It seems a bit out of place, a bit unnecessary.That singular criticism aside, The Minor White have made a very strong album in 'Old Theatrics'. However, they do need to filter out the pop urges in favour of keeping the genuine, soulful and well-constructed songwriting if they wish to achieve true folky greatness. Save that for the 4th major label album, and keep cracking out quirky bangers like the majority of songs on Old Theatrics instead! 75% The Minor White On MySpace