There are two definitions of lashes; both bring to mind very different images. The one that comes to mind most quickly for me is that of eyelashes. It's more common, everyone has them, and I tend to think unless you're doing some man-scaping or you're a girl, you don't tend to think about them too much. They're just there.
The second definition, and maybe it's because I grew up going to Catholic school, is that of lashes, like whip lashes. Something you dole out as punishment. Now if I had to choose between one or the other of these definitions to describe The Lashes, I'd have to go with the one you put mascara on.
It must be hard to be in a band that lots of people like and lots of people hate. Or maybe it's not, I wouldn't really know. I listened to a few songs on the album, and while the comparisons to The Strokes, Hot Hot Heat and The Exploding Hearts are generous, they just aren't real. Too much polish, too much hairspray, and too much mascara - Not enough lashes. I'd like more rough and tumble hard work than packaging. While you can't really say that about all those bands I mentioned, at least you can say they had something unique going for them and that their timing was right. On the dying edge of new new wave, The Lashes are in trouble.
Perhaps the real reason I’m annoyed with the band has more to do with Sony and their insistence of using a packaged piece of software with the CD so that I could listen to it on my computer. Maybe if I didn’t have to deal with that, I wouldn’t be so vitriol about it all.
Redeeming factors on the album include the song featured on their previous EP The Stupid Stupid on Lookout!; “Death by Mixtape.” These guys also are energetic enough to be interesting on the live stage and get props for trying to pick up where The Exploding Hearts so tragically left off. A little more of that, please. |