Reviews

The first thing I did upon receiving this record in the mail was head over to the band’s website to learn more about them. This was my first problem. There is hardly any info posted about Echo Helstrom on their own site. The only thing you learn is that there are four members and that they are all trained musicians. That’s it! Not a great way to grab my attention. Alas, a band can not be judged simply on their website content, so I popped the cd in. I had read online articles about the band, comparing them to Wilco and The Jayhawks and that got me excited again since I love both of those bands. Anyway, it’s a week later and I have started listening to this record now about five or six times, having only finished it twice. It starts off interestingly enough with a soft latin jazz drumbeat and some reverbed, melodic guitars, which had me hoping for a Murder by Death type sound.  But soon enough, the violin enters with a silly sounding melody. This is followed by the arrival of the worst part of this record; the vocals. Lead singer and guitarist Ross Seligman is all-together underwhelming and is a pretty trite and uncreative lyricist as well. The first lyric to grace the album’s opener, “I am Not a Murderer,” is as follows; “I am walking behind you / just so I can smell you.” This line bugged the shit out of me and pretty much set the lyrical standards for the album. Seligman’s attempts at a claustrophobic and haunting lyrical direction comes off as childish and naïve. And just wait till he tries to be political towards the end of the record. That’s not to say that mediocre lyrics can’t be saved by a rousing vocal performance…but, unfortunately, that just isn’t here either. Seligman’s voice sounds weak and his melodies are hardly memorable. In short, he rarely sounds like he cares.
 
The comparisons to Wilco and The Jayhawks are warranted, though Echo Helstrom never even gets close to portraying the intensity those bands achieve. Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has one of the most distinct and heartbreaking voices in rock, while Jayhawks frontman Gary Louris can pen some of the creepiest lyrics out there. Echo Helstrom is left grasping at the coattails of its influences, which is unfortunate because a few different decisions and this record could have been much better. Six minute album cornerstone, “The Veil,” has a great section just past the four minute mark where the band kicks into a bit of a Cursive vibe (Ugly Organ era) and some distortion on Seligman’s voice really lends his performance the edge it needs. But this is a small section on a much larger album. The band has even chosen to include a cover of Radiohead’s “True Love Waits,” which only goes to further point the finger at the albums lyrical missteps; a cover song included on a record should flow with the record, not stand out simply because it is a better song than the rest. One other thing could have been better is the production on the record; so little is done in regards to leaving more room for the songs to breathe. Every song has two guitars (or more) in it and no chances are taken with the mix. As I was listening to “True Love Waits,” I kept wondering why it didn’t occur to the band to just cut the guitar from the mix and leave the vocal against a backdrop of sparse strings and atmospheres. But, this seems to be the shortcoming of Echo Helstrom; there simply is no vision, and that makes for a boring and uninspired listening experience. A great vocalist can save a lackluster collection of tunes, but in this case, no such singer is present. And with this type of music, it’s almost always the singer who makes or breaks the band.