In a day and age in which the radio airwaves are mostly ruled by pop and hip-hop, it’s nice to see a band like Menew (pronounced menu) bring a more traditional rock “˜n’ roll sound to the medium.
The group is made up of three members, Shade (vocals, guitar), Key (piano synthesizers) and Nathan Samuel Phillip (drums, vocals), and on its first major release, “Wide Awake Hello,” the band shows that it really knows how to craft some decent tunes, even if that potential isn’t always fulfilled.
The album sets up listeners’ expectations with the opening track, “Wide Awake,” which is a cool, jaunty song that’s upbeat, but not enough to get annoying. It has some cool musical elements to it, and as the vocals crescendo into the chorus of “I’m Wide Awake / Hello,” one can’t help but get excited to hear what the rest of the album has to offer.
Unfortunately, this same sort of upbeat musical attitude isn’t really revisited until about the sixth track, “Fighter Orphan,” which is a downright fun rock song.
Instead, the second song ““ made up of two parts, “The Neon Light” and “In Debt,” ““ is a mellowed-out, drum-and-piano-driven song with a misplaced vocal style. Still, once the chorus comes in, the track gets decent, although the second half of the track feels out of place.
Most of the tracks follow the pattern established by “The Neon Light,” with guitars usually serving as noise filler. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is a little disappointing after the setup that the first track offers, and it also makes a lot of the tracks sound pretty bland. After about the first five tracks or so, the songs all start to sound the same.
The other problem with this type of song is that the way Menew constructs its tracks requires the vocals to carry the song quite a bit, and the vocals that Menew has on display aren’t exactly top quality.
While some might argue that the singing style on “Wide Awake Hello” is a deliberate choice, it then prompts the question, “Why would anyone choose to sing like this?”
Tracks feature either very low crooning with strange accentuations or weird falsettos that never quite fit the song. The worst tracks are those that swing back and forth between these two vocal styles. It also doesn’t help that most of lyrics are pretty cringe-worthy.
Still, it’s easy to overlook this problem when the vocals aren’t used as the main highlight of the song; unfortunately, Menew decides to do this for a good portion of the album’s tracks. Generally, by the time the chorus kicks in, the whole band kicks in, and the song usually gets pretty rocking and enjoyable. Unfortunately, it usually takes just too long to get there.
Overall, Menew manages to entertain for a little three-piece band putting out their first major LP. It’ll be interesting to see how they transform and evolve in the future, but “Wide Awake Hello,” is by no means a must-own release.
Email Overstreet at moverstreet@media.ucla.edu.