FEBRUARY 2010 ONLINE EDITORIALS

Feeling Beastly - Pandamonium

album cover

By Joseph Prinzivalli

Feeling Beastly’s new EP, Pandamonium, was a pleasant surprise. I instantly loved the name of the album, but I have been known to be a total sucker for a play on words.
Pandamonium is loaded with chunky guitar riffs and oversimplified drumbeats that will force you to bob your head. Kelsy and Marta’s vocals range from ghostly to full on banshee. Together, these elements combine to produce an eerie kind of pop. The first track, “Feast of Lanterns,” is a great opening song for an EP. It takes off running like a thoroughbred out of the gate with a thick saturated guitar sound and dizzying vocal harmonies. This track brings me back to the mid-90s when bands like The Breeders and Veruca Salt ruled the rock radio stations and MTV.
“Drywall” begins with a quick and rhythmic vocal line that is almost hypnotizing. I also really like the vocal work on “Paws & Claws,” but I found the guitar outro to be abrasively out of key. The last track, “Crash Along,” contains excellent dynamic and tempo changes, and has a haunting ambient keyboard melody in the bridge that washes over the chord changes.
Overall, the simplicity that makes this music great also lends it to being repetitive. It seems, at times, that the songs’ rhythmic gimmicks drag on to the point where they begin to lose their value. I honestly feel like I’ve grown out of this type of music, but there are plenty of adolescents that would lick this stuff up.
myspace.com/feelingbeastly