Goodbye Motel - end/play (Album)
» Goodbye Motel - Empress Hotel, The, Vic - March 22, 2009
Melbourne band Goodbyemotel follow up their debut EP ‘Information’ with the 5-tracker ‘end.play’. I find the Goodbyemotel sound hard to categorise. It is definitely rock, has a little pop, and is heavy on the drama. Dramatic-rock-pop… I don’t think the term will take off. If you think Manic Street Preachers and Live, you will be getting pretty close. And yes, I said Live. And that sort of sums this band up. They are certainly plumbing a mid- to late- nineties sound, which is unusual at the minute. Most bands are attempting the eighties kitsch electronica of about 25 years ago. By rights, bands shouldn’t be rehashing the mid-nineties until around 2020. However, it seems Goodbyemotel have jumped forward to the mid-nineties post-grunge era, skipping new wave, post-new wave and grunge altogether. So does this make Goodbyemotel ahead of their time? What it does make them is neo-retro post-grunge. An absolute hyphenators dream! Watch this space, it is going to be all the rage soon.
So listening to neo-retro post-grunge is a bit of shock really. My ears are currently accustomed to two-piece bands and Casios, and here is a 5-piece singing some kind of rock opera. But I have to say I like it in a sort of way. I like it because it is a great excuse to get a little melancholic and bash out an anthem at the top of your voice. And also you can turn it off whenever you want, which is important with bands like this. It’s like holding a baby, calm in the knowledge you can hand it back to their parents when it starts crying.
The production of the record is excellent, with a very big but clear sound. And the playing is tight, very tight. The vocals are impressive, sounding a bit like Freddie Mercury, meets Robert Plant, meets Eddie Vedder. Although the delivery is so serious and dramatic you expect (and are half hoping) the singer to launch into a huge falsetto in each chorus, like that poser from The Darkness.
I have one gripe with the band. There are 2 guitarists (and a bassist) and they are playing neo-retro post-grunge power ballads yet there is not one guitar solo on the entire disc. Surely nothing seals the emotional deal in a power ballad than a huge guitar solo around 3/4 of the way through. The kind of solo that has to be played by a guitarist standing in front of a fan to get the rock locks flowing. Slash certainly knew it.
So… if you like the Butterfly Effect, Manic Street Preachers, Live, or that classic neo-retro post-grunge sound you will probably love this. Although for mine, the centrefold of the CD booklet sums them up for me. It is a photo of the band brooding on a couch sitting inexplicably in the centre of a Fitzroy backstreet. What does this say? Middle of the road.
