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While the second track of The Boxing Lesson’s latest EP claims “Indie Rock is Dead,” the album does its best to keep the statement ironic. The band’s third release, the 26-minute Songs in the Key of C, is littered with small successes that offer up at least a bit of musical CPR to the supposedly deceased genre. It may not be divine resurrection, but it still gets your pulse thumping.
The Boxing Lesson has made a name for themselves by exploring genres without falling victim to any one style’s pitfalls. The first track, “Back from the Dead,” is a steady-paced rock piece with enough spacey synth to lend credence to the band’s self-professed new-wave leanings. “Indie Rock is Dead” hits slow and builds to a sonorous climax as vocalist Paul Waclawsky croons, “Its Rock 101.” The song may be a freshman composition, but simplicity never sounded so good. The backing vocals are crisp but not overly processed, and the very basic guitar parts keep the song from feeling overdone. Both “Rollerskate Suitcase” and “Climb the Ladder” have an ominous sense of urgency that, at the height of both songs, shows Indie at its most poignant. “Climb the Ladder” is subtly dark and perhaps melodramatic, but it lends a gothic feel to the album that seems to seep into the surrounding tracks. “Getaway Car,” the final track, is cohesive and beautiful, with overlaying guitar lines that are both sorrowful and suspenseful, making it a memorable send-off.
Even with its successes, Songs in the Key of C never seems to catch up to the pace of its first few songs. All the slower tracks congeal together in the middle of the album, and though the final track, “Getaway Car,” picks up some steam, it’s too late to entirely re-energize the listener. When Waclawsky intones on “Mirrors,” “Crying charades/with friends for hire/the beauty’s bathed/in designer fire,” one can’t help but appreciate the lyrical potential in the album — creating a commentary on vanity and materialism without sounding pretentious is a hard task, but Waclawsky manages to pull it off, at least on paper. In action though, such potential often rings hollow: the softer vocals on “Climb the Ladder” and “Crooked” are so pumped full of syrupy over-inflection that they come off sounding corny. This is tragic, because Waclawsky’s voice, when strained to a more grainy shout, is sublime, which just shows that the songs that throw the most grit in the motor are those in which the band shines brightest.
The Boxing Lesson does shine brightly at times — which is good, because it would be hard task bringing Indie back to life without any light on the operating table. At the same time, several major shortcomings keep Songs in the Key of C from being truly brilliant. My message to The Boxing Lesson: stabilize the patient, then let someone else do the major surgery.
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