SOMETHING TRUE, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY
Aisles
Aisles debut album, Something True, Something New, Something Out of the Ordinary, has a raw and unfinished quality to it. There’s plenty of acoustic and vocal harmony. You get an image of a hunched man wailing with soul into the microphone at a clichéd smoky bar with comrades dutifully nodding along to the beats.
There is a slight bit of repetitiveness to the work, but it mostly makes you practice your muscle flexes, acting like this super-charged singer with your jaw open really wide, your eyes screwed shut. While a bit creepy, the album also manages to be energetic, particularly on track “Beautiful|Red”, which is my personal favorite on the album. A bit ballad-y in some patches and plain lounge-y in others, it’s not bad overall, but I was hoping for a tad bit more magic. The newness and uniqueness is not so apparent. Good work, Aisles. But let’s face it, you could do much better.
-Tanishka Kundu
