Since assembling in Seattle last year, it’s been a fast road forward for this indie pop trio. After gaining airplay and popularity with their first single ‘Dreaming’, Seapony have by no means dawdled in releasing their debut album Go With Me. This is an album likely to encourage mixed opinions, and one I personally find hard to be overly enthusiastic about. Not for want of decent tunes or general appeal however, but it’s failure to bring anything new into an already saturated sound. Arriving on the outbound tide of a genre revival, ‘Go With Me’ delivers little in the way of a new direction. Rather, this album offers bare bones revivalist dream pop, simple, cutesy and delivered in a soft haze.
There’s no doubt however that Seapony will not be without their listeners. The nature of these tracks makes it a very listenable album. Never taking any aspect of the music further than it should go, every part of the song is kept well with in it’s boundaries. The guitars are basic, a few chords and simple hooks that assist Weild’s soft melodies, never challenging another instrument for attention. Not that there is much else vying for the it mind you, drumming has been relegated to a rather appropriate drum machine from the mid ‘80s, and the bass lines –while actually pretty catchy- mostly go unnoticed.
Unfortunately, this simplicity also tends to be one of the album’s greatest downsides – it just gets boring. Most of all this comes from the unfailing pace of the vocals, almost uniform throughout the record at a couple words per second. The lyrics, written not by Weild but rather boyfriend and Seapony co-founder/guitarist Danny Rowland, will also no doubt become rather irritating after a few listens. Repetition of the title lines in ‘I Really Do’ and ‘What You See’ feels more like plain laziness rather than an emphasis of the idea. And while simplicity in lyric writing most always trumps unnecessary complexity - this time around, no dice.
As is the case with most indie debuts, Go With Me is a home written and recorded album, and bar perhaps opening hit ‘Dreaming’ this is hardly obvious. Where many new comers with a few good tracks will intentionally fuzz up their sound to shift focus from the quality of a song to the atmosphere it produces, Seapony leave it pretty straight forward and make no move to disguise their tracks. And for this the band does deserve praise. But for the most part this album seems destined to become the inoffensive background sound of some ordinary occasion. How you regard this album really depends on what you’re listening to right now, but in the greater scheme of things, Go With Me will have little lasting effect beyond where it is to lead it’s creators.
