Album Review: The Morning Benders - Big Echo
- Written by Ben Dufton
California’s The Morning Benders have returned with their second album Big Echo. After the critical acclaim given to previous album Talking Through Tin Cans, The Morning Benders have signed to Rough Trade Records and garnered an extensive and honourable roll call of tour mates, including Death Cab For Cutie, MGMT, Yeasayer, Yo La Tengo and Grizzly Bear – whose Chris Taylor co-produced the album.
The record player static intro to the album’s opener ‘Excuses’ gives a hint of things to come, the aforementioned track invoking spirits of the softer side of ‘50s rock and roll. ‘Promises’ initially brings us more up to date, bringing to mind The Shins and, possibly tellingly, Grizzly Bear, with a bold guitar line and dancing pianos.
The dreamy soundscape of ‘Pleasure Sighs’ contains singer Chris Chu’s musings on, at a guess, a failed relationship – “…Here I am again / Trying to relearn how to breathe / And how easy it sinks / Feeling slips away from me…”. ‘Hand Me Downs’ picks up the pace a bit, but ends up meandering down some blind alleys before turning back and going the way it knows.
‘All Day Daylight’ finds Chu and company getting a little peeved at having matters taken out of their hands - “Then you put me on this vacation / So it's really not the town / It's winter halfway across the world / Somewhere its bright daylight … I lived in the background / I sleep behind the scenes / I had someone take all my calls / And watched them outplay me”. Meanwhile, the introduction to finale ‘Sleeping In’ brings to mind Fleet Foxes in its reverb laden harmony before the voices separate out a la The Beach Boys
Overall, Big Echo just didn’t captivate me, instead sending me off to my record collection to find albums by the bands that seem to have influenced them. The album is pleasant and sunny enough to be a backdrop to many a barbeque over the (promised long hot) summer, but perhaps not gripping enough to be an enduring one.