Sometimes I’ll take an album home from a concert to find out that the live act is totally different from what’s been recorded. Or sometimes I’ll catch a show and wonder wildly at the difference in sound and apparent quality of the music. Notions and judgments will have to wake up and shuffle around to make a different formation and I find myself wishing that the band had recorded a bit later on down the road.
I wanted to know if this was the case with Veda and their first full-length, “The Weight of an Empty Room.” After checking out the customer reviews on Amazon in an attempt at some perspective, I read the term “modern rock nu metal” and all but ran away from my computer. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if that’s what Veda is supposed to be and I don’t entirely get what Veda is getting at in the album. But I can imagine them putting on a great, fervent show, despite what I think of this album, because at times, it simply glimmers.
This Kansas City group has only been around for a year and is touted to have built a likewise “fervid underground following.” They cite Bjork, Foo Fighters and Coldplay as their influences and the guitars and rhythm swirl and thump accordingly, in tight formation. They are trying to build something big, strong, edgy. Vocalist Kristen May has a unique voice for what I imagine “modern rock nu metal” is. Her voice is light and clear. You expect her to pull out the acoustic guitar and strum a quirky song about squirrels or push buttons on the apple laptop and sing over some electro-beeps. But her sing has a thread of somehow elastic steel that cuts through the big, strong, edgy to really create a really interesting, if not unique, sound.
Veda can soar, and yes, be epic. But when almost every song attempts to do this, especially in each chorus, the wax on the soaring wings rapidly melt and it’s easy for the ear to stop paying attention. Songs like “Desire on Repeat” want for filling and momentum and become hard to differentiate from each other. The wistful lyrics can lose their stride when they are packed into the music and end up clunky, broken up by a random strewing of commas as in the opening track. The end of one line will get squashed with the next to form a musical phrase like: I want so much to run carry me/ over all this distance my/ dear trade this fear carry me over all –- instead of how it is delineated in the printed lyrics.
It’s when Veda breaks out of this epic-ness and the many heavy questions, letting words and music match, vocals and instruments breathe, that they are at their best. “Lover’s Lie” changes it up with its more interesting chord structure and guitar counterpoint. I loved the catchy “It’s All Happening on Broadway” which starts out with a muted, fuzzy vocal and includes a slight melodic detour on the lyric “failed you” and lengthening on “all your long hours.”
Perhaps Veda’s music translates to a totally different experience live, but despite their promising musical components, on this record, too many of the songs come off paradoxically too weighty and too empty at the same time. |