February 5th, 2008
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Hartfield - A Sorrow HeartlandIf you've ever considered starting up your own music blog, I must caution it's a frustrating task trying to maintain fresh source material on a daily basis. I've cast a net that stretches far and wide to catch everything under the sun that even remotely sounds like it will appeal to me, and even with all those filters, I still end up liking less than 5% of what I come across.
Oftentimes I'm just looking for that spark...something that marks a band/song distinctively. Shoegaze is probably the most difficult genre to trudge through because, let's be honest, cranking up the distortion/feedback is an easy copout for mediocre songwriting. It appeals to me for the sake of texture alone, but I'm often left feeling empty because I'm looking for that added oomph.
Hartfield is an example of one such band that has that edge. I could have formed a rant on this subject in any update, but the timing on this one just felt too perfect. That said, Hartfield doesn't do anything much different from 90% of shoegaze bands -- they just do it better.
Rating: 8.4
Genre: dream pop, shoegaze
RIYL: Asobi Seksu
From: Japan
