Review Summary: Dylan Anderson makes a leap to a genre entirely alien to his former Of Machines.
Many bands and artists make drastic jumps between genres. For example, this year, Oceana jumped from a Post-Hardcore sound to an Indie sound. As Cities Burn doing the same thing prior. Now, Dylan Anderson from Of Machines and Their Eyes Look North fame has teamed up with Bo Fletcher and has assembled a Dream Pop duo named Soft Powers.
To start off, you are most likely reading this because you found out Dylan Anderson has a new music project. You probably remember his powerful voice from Their Eyes Look north and/or Of Machines, be prepared to throw everything you knew about Dylan out the window. He has transformed his musicianship entirely this time around. First off his vocals are nothing like what you’d hear in the mentioned bands. He sounds more of a Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine fame.
Now, lets talk about the music. It is primarily in the Shoegazing/Dream Pop genre of Alternative. Soft Powers adds in other elements from funk and psychedelic to create an inviting and interesting atmosphere that Dylans new vocal style flows with quite nicely, if you have an ear for this genre, you might enjoy it but as stated before fans of Of Machines may have trouble getting into it or disregard it entirely which is understandable on my behalf.
However, I feel that the potential greatness of this band falls flat in some areas. I have felt the songs are very abrupt and poorly produced, what could be a great song is halted by bad production essentially. Furthermore this album is quite honestly nothing new. Just like the Post-Hardcore that Dylan used to master, this genre is incredibly hard to find a band that displays originality. With more trial and error, its certain that this Duo will find their place in this genre.
This album shows potential, but not enough of it to be very memorable, with a couple of listens you may become tiresome of it, but Soft Powers definitely have the Avidity to prosper in this genre.
