The Quails – Master of Imperfection

Good to see that music still has subtlety; it doesn’t happen very often these days. I was starting to believe blunt force trauma was going to completely overtake reality. Then I happened upon The Quails. I missed out on the band’s first outing but, thankfully, the guys at Best Fit were kind enough to send a copy of Master of Imperfection my way.

The Quails sport a rather wide range of influences, but they’re not as obvious as modern bands usually make it. If you look hard enough, you can find Queen (‘Shining Star,’ ‘This Town’), Iron Maiden (‘Master of Imperfection’) and The Killers (‘That Other World’) among others. Sure, the influences are clear but they aren’t obtrusive. And that’s the key to the band’s success: The band elects to channel, not copy, its heroes within its own songwriting. Granted, the riff to ‘World’ has the playful sass of The Cure and the chorus synth screams The Killers, but the band makes the song its own by using the influences as a starting point. Hell, throwing together mope-rock and ’00s new wave is a great idea in itself, to say nothing of its quasi-originality. The theme of the song – “Maybe we could be happy together in another world…” – certainly suggests Robert Smith but how many times have you heard Smith talk about being content, even from a hypothetical standpoint?

While the band uses subtlety for melody, the musicianship is anything but. Perhaps most noteworthy is how high in the mix bassist Sam Banks is. Combined with drummer Chris Prentice, the rhythm section expertly glues the fantastic arrangements together. The pair’s effectiveness stems from its patience. Very rarely does the duo act as the main attraction within a given song, which is what a rhythm section is supposed to do. (It’s not as straightforward as you might think these days.) The real fun behind this band, though, is in the interplay between guitarists Dan Steer and Max Armstrong. The twin guitar chime on ‘Princess’ and the call-and-response of the title track alone add to the replay value of the album.

If there is a downside to Imperfection, it’s just a shade above nit-picking. The album’s final cut, ‘Transmit, Evade, Escape,’ is a short piano ballad that seems tacked on in every way. Yes, it’s a beautiful little ditty but it also has nothing to do with the rest of the songs here and, therefore, ends the album on a sour note – and an irrelevant one at that. Woulda been better as a b-side, guys. That one, tiny nuisance aside, The Quails have put together a fine set of songs within Master of Imperfection that any fan of modern post-punk would enjoy. The album ain’t perfect, as the title suggests, but with tracks like these it doesn’t have to be.