Genre : Soft Rock / Synth Pop Crossover
Label : Independent
Official site : > - here - <
Chaser Eight seems and sounds like a duo - at least - of autonomous individuals, and I'm 100% sure that it features minimum 1 lady and 1 gentleman. I like the fact that the record is misleading. Because no one is sitting on the stairs on the cover. Finally, some legitimate originality and much welcomed spiritual grit. I mean - you sitting on a step of a brief stairway, giving morose face to a crimson sky, and all this on your album cover? Seriously? Based on the first track, you'd assume that Chaser Eight's female lead singer is not yet comfortable with her mixed voice register, but tries to use it/to explore it anyway - this always is very admirable. Later on, when you are about to articulate a silent covert moan, you realize that she was only doing this rendition of an intentionally super-repressed mixed voice delivery, to be kind, so the male singer has a chance to exist on the right channel of the mix. In reality, - AND, "out" of it - she could obliterate the whole build with her singing power. AND luckily!! By the second verse, when she finally showcases full throat power, - which, let's be honest, the only thing you've been waiting for - she comes across as very powerful and efficient. But listen to that "me" in the line "you and me" at the chorus - no one believes that, not even her. This is the charm of it, the male on the right channel accepting that he is in a musical position in which the female is holding back, so he can exist, too. Spiritual, baby! Read on to know more.
This is why it is so efficient - the effect works on your keen readiness to appreciate eloquent discrepancies and auditory quasi-deficiencies, - which are so much more entertaining to find that to listen to compromised renditions of a deliberately targeted supraegoistic falseperfection - especially when someone is at peace or desperate enough to not want to conceal them yet OR anymore. Such are the respective worlds both of paradoxes and the extremes of truth.
Interestingly enough, it usually never - yeah, I just lost a level - is the thing you worked the most on, that will emerge as the hallmark of the identity of a song, but its flaws. Which does not of course mean, that the favorite flaws YOU find, are identical to those (allegedly!!) found and cherished by another sentiences. The chorus of the opening track gets better over time. When the constellation is such, then no other choice is given that to admire a perfectly successful pattern.
As far as harmonic anatomies are concerned, second track "Never Enough" comes across as a quasi-U2-esque base structure, and the female singing is much less restrained and more relentlessly delivered. Yes yes! I tremendously like the culmination, when she sings "never enough", then she sings "never ever never enough", because I believe her. A crossover of colorful, richly detailed '80s synthpop and soft rock is attainable, and the fabric is embellished enough - with layered, aggressive female singing in it, yes! yes! - to invite you to revisit. A highlight.
In the very beginning of track "One Love", a dramatic variant of Sheryl Crowe emerges. At first face value, I very much like the movement of the harmonies in this track, as they don't just repeat in a predictable cycle, they are not reluctant to feature deliberate disharmonies that are later will be resolved, and the occurrences of a full circle exhibit different endings per round. If you are giving an intent and attentive inner eye, - and why give any other kind of it? - and reach the second verse culmination of 2:00, it is very hard not to appreciate what they harmonically have accomplished with this song, and the female lead singing consorts to the unease in ways that really makes you sit on the edge of reality. Cool harmony design, to be honest. The trick is done by modulating the base chord, and by asking a woman to sing on it. Finally, someone realized that it both can be done at the same time!
"Run-Run" is Chaser Eight's variant on the quintessential Quentin Tarantino song. An interesting blend of surf rock and Abba is observable, and, courtesy of the production decisions, the female lead singer really is in-your-face : the sounds are very dynamic, organic, and multi-layered. By this period of this record, I like the singing lady very much. She is honest, has talent, and has awesome personal micro-failings and peakings, here is what I mean : listen how she fails at 1:14 to hit the correct, intended notes (where she sings "would she even care" - "even" is out of ALL legal places - not by much, but enough to make a latex gimp music critic pervert like me notice relentlessly - but she does not care about that, and continues, harvesting awesome patterns in the very next moment that truly brings to mind perennial Anne Wilson in the sense that I'd really like to hear what this woman is capable to if she'd want to rip some hearts out as a start. (No pun intended.)
"Without Love" (PaWa Remix) reminds me a bit of Kidneythieves take on "Crazy", but without "teh" Free Dominguez contemplating murder on her romantic interest. Yet, the song is not less powerful, and this is saying something! This track once again exhibits a very demanding, yet playful/efficient, competent understanding of harmonic structures. Granted, the track excites itself up to the point that the overall build gets a tad too desperate at the climax, trying to appeal with dub step aesthetics and whatnot, when I'd really be just all dandy with the vocals and with no desperation for my admiration exhibited in a so sloppily concealed manner - please have mercy with the pinball machine synth, I want to hear what the lead singer has to sing at the conclusion. "Well, we have no conclusion, but we have some clueless-ass dubstep fuckaroundery, too." But don't take this the wrong way, as I love the song, I even love the aforementioned desperate dubstep pseudo-nuances in it, because the only reason they have featured it, is that they must have spent an eternity with it, and you lose connection with a creation that way. Indeed it is better to get rid of the thing.
Here is a suspicion : this song reeks soooo much "Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines - Vesuvius bar theme", - here is the link to the song - that it amuses me to no end. I don't TRULY know if this release has anything to do with Santa Monica, (if the band is from there, etc., I really don't) - but for some reason I think it has. Santa Monica is but a dream from where I'm not seeing it. Other than that, if they indeed got inspired by The Vesuvius track, I won't blame them.
Check out Chaser Eight - > here.
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