I'm the kind of drummer geek that if I see a band where the drummer really stands out, I instantly seek out everything else they've done. So when I saw Impossible Hair a few weeks ago and thought drummer Sammy Ponzar was the best thing about the band, I saw that he had another band that had just released a record on Dischord and had to check that out. Andalusians is a songwriting vehicle Basla Andolsun, who plays bass in Beauty Pill, so that was encouraging too (and to play 6 degrees of Dischord separation, the band Impossible Hair was playing with that night was The Caribbean, who sometimes have a member in common with Smart Went Crazy, which kind of later became Beauty Pill).

I have a pretty good track record with just blindly going for whatever new Dischord band has a link to an older Dischord band I liked, but so far I'm not so hot on Andalusians. Their debut release, Do The Work, a three-song single on vinyl and a six-song EP in digital formats, isn't a lot to go on, but it's also not a lot to be optimistic about. Andolsun's voice is kind of unpleasantly whiny and nasal, and despite a good hook here or there the songs are just kind of generic bland rock. Still, there are some promising songs that indicate Andalusions might get better by the time they make a full-length, and of course the drums are pretty good, especially on "I Don't Know." But mostly I think I'll just go back to patient waiting for a new Beauty Pill album.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 04, 2009 at 9:45 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.