Weird Dreams - Choreography

Boredom exists. You don’t usually expect it to slowly fondle with your consciousness during a relaxing evening Sunday spent listening to music, but sure enough, it came along and boy did it make me yawn.

Choreography is one of the dullest albums I’ve ever listened to.

Now for the about turn.

I’m actually going to praise this album, because it serves a purpose, it soundtracks a day in the life, it means something. Weird Dreams capture apathy, and the cruel sense of directionless drifting, as you lay back and watch life pass you by. There is heartache and a grey throbbing pain here on this album that subsides only after swallowing a couple of aspirins.

The castrated melodies and the jangly bittersweet guitars gush forth a honey fountain of frustrated emotions. The songs deliberately antagonize, they are reflective, causing the listener to gaze introspectively at themselves, and attempt to climb out of the audio spiderwebs woven by this tight East London unit.

An interesting thing to note is that Weird Dreams are heavily influenced by David Lynch; sometimes Lynchian love can come across as a bit masturbatory, such as Surfer Blood’s over enthusiastic ‘Twin Peaks’. Weird Dreams are actually a lot more subtle with their decade spanning psych-pop time travel making ever so brief pit stops all over Lynch’s filmography.

Darkness, when done best, can provide some frightful surprises. ‘Suburban Coated’ creatures creep up on you in the well-lit cul-de-sac, as Doran Edwards sings with blowtorch in hand about being a “passenger in someone else’s life”. Those creatures mutate into marching apparitions swirling in a restless mind as the melancholic ‘666.66’ leads into ‘River of the Damned’, a song which puts its hands in its pockets, closes its eyes and somehow doesn’t trip over the kerb when crossing the road.

Are Weird Dreams an innovative band? Will they become the subject of overwrought, overenthusiastic music reviews over the blogosphere? The answer is no, even if it has already been answered yes.

This album washes over you, in the same way a rain shower temporarily startles your skin in the spring time, any feelings are lost when the sun comes up from behind the clouds and dries off the damp. I’d argue that there isn’t enough hunger on display from a young band. Apathy and exhaustion can translate musically, but it needs to slap the listener and make them acknowledge that they’re in the same boat. This one doesn’t quite connect with the listener, who stands idle on the riverbank of the Mississippi looking through binoculars as Huck Finn floats past in a daisy haze.

If the band doesn’t appear to care, providing satisfactory as opposed to great, adequate rather than ambitious, then this review will continue to spout more nonsense that Lil Wayne spat on ‘6 Foot 7 Foot’.

I’m tossing and turning, a coin suspended in the air. Heads or tails, how does it fall? Is Choreography good or bad?

Choreography is a confusing album, possibly upgradeable - one can talk about jangles and melodies until the cows come home. If Weird Dreams truly write psych-pop then where is the much maligned hit that pushes its box fresh head beyond the pelvic inlet, if the band wants to remain obscure then where is the mystery, because their mucky finger prints are left indelibly on music’s already tired and frayed tapestry.

As a listener I hated it, but then I learned to somehow appreciate it.