CD Reviews

Pela

Anytown Graffiti | Great Society

By SHARON STEEL | June 5, 2007

3.5 Stars

It was wise of the Brooklyn-based four-piece to list on their bio the American short-story master Raymond Carver as one of their influences, wedged in between Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. Carver was a minimalist writer, and just as he made a name for himself packing a quiet desolation into his well-groomed sentences, Pela raise the bar for passionate, arena-ready indie rock. Anytown Graffiti is a debut that feels as if it had already outgrown the small clubs and dive-like venues where it will be played. Nobody is drinking heavily in Pela’s lyrics, as most of Carver’s protagonists do by habit. But vocalist William McCarthy worries about people standing around “like a ghost in my room” and notices someone’s “small-town stare,” and he navigates various missed connections. In other words, Anytown Graffiti would provide a fine aural background to a imaginary character’s disillusioned suffering. Pela can make a miserable situation seem impressive, with guitars luxuriating in an early U2 mirage and McCarthy sing-choking his words as though he couldn’t bear to let them go. “I know why you left,” he wails on “Song Writes Itself.” “I think it’s best you get far away.” If more bands wrote music that sounded like fiction, they might deliver results aspleasurable as this.

Pela + Brakes, Brakes, Brakes + Electric Soft Parade + Static of the Gods | T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline St, Cambridge | June 14 | 617.492.BEAR

Related: Lucky number seven, Jindabyne, Less is best, More

Topics: CD Reviews , U2, Husker Du, Raymond Carver, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY SHARON STEEL

YO, JONNY! THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE | February 05, 2013
Sometime after becoming a YouTube megastar and crashing into the cult of personality that has metastasized in contemporary society, Teddy Wayne's 11-year-old bubblegum idol Jonny Valentine is hanging out in his dressing room getting a blow job from a girl who doesn't even like his music.

LENA DUNHAM AND HBO GET IT RIGHT | April 13, 2012
When a new television show chronicling the lives of young women arrives, it tends to come packaged with the promise that it will expertly define them, both as a generation and a gender.

EUGENIDES'S UPDATED AUSTEN | October 12, 2011
For his long-awaited third novel, Jeffrey Eugenides goes back to look at love in the '80s — and apparently decides that it's a lot like love in the early 19th century.

REVIEW: RINGER | September 08, 2011
Sixty seconds into the CW's new psychological thriller Ringer, star Sarah Michelle Gellar is seen running from a masked attacker in the darkness.

LOVE'S LEXICOGRAPHER | February 10, 2011
As the editorial director at Scholastic, David Levithan is surrounded by emotional stories about adolescents. Being overexposed to such hyperbolic feelings about feelings could easily turn a writer off pursuing such ventures himself — despite the secrets he may have picked up along the way.