Review Summary: Pretty Darn Slowcore
Patience is a virtue. They say that sometimes you just have to invest, put up with some crap, and then benefit farther down the road. After all, good things come to those who wait! Unfortunately, on their third album, Transaction de Novo, Bedhead tend to deliver more ‘wait’ than they do ‘good things.’ On their debut effort, the Texas based band had delivered an album of mid-tempo indie guitar rock, which was bizarrely thrown in with the Slowcore scene. Sure, the vocals whispered over clean elegant guitars, and no, there were no electrifying riffs or noisy distortion, but the songs all had sense of propulsion; they moved and were well paced, leaving the listener with the sense that something important has been said. These principles are thrown to the wayside on Transaction de Novo, creating an album with a lot space and not a lot of payoff.
The opening track makes it abundantly clear that this album will be a test of patience, which certainly isn’t a bad thing. However, the song barely moves forward, containing only some sparse bass, whispered vocals, and soft, clean guitars. This is the pattern for the majority of the songs on the album; Songs like ‘Forgetting,’ ‘Leopatra,’ and ‘More than Ever’ blow by without anything interesting or noteworthy happening. Silence can sometimes be an integral element of good music, but Transaction de Novo confuses silence with unremarkable boredom.
This being said, the album does shine at points. The overall production is very high quality, and the songs are all intentionally composed, inevitably yielding some good results. ‘More than Ever’ perfectly matches a slow paced atmosphere with thoughtful lyrics, and the low whisper of ‘Parade’ creates an suspenseful effect that is released by a blast of distortion. In fact, the heavy songs here tend to succeed more than the slower ones. ‘Exmundane’ and ‘Psychosomatica’ move along at decent speeds, and make for a relieving break in the overall monotony of the album, but don’t justify the minutes of nothingness that precedes them.
Transaction de Novo ultimately uses too much of a good thing. The quiet songs work well when isolated, and would have served as good breaks on an otherwise adventurous rock album. However, layering on one snail paced minimalist crawl after another does wear thin, detracting from an otherwise decent album. While good things can come to those who wait, Bedhead unfortunately ends this outing without anything remarkable to say.
