Friday, December 26, 2014

Band Review: This Good Robot


I have wanted to check out the band for a while now, but this review is part of the magical thinking/summoning reviews I have been doing lately. It's a bit more complicated than the others.*

I want to let the band speak for itself to start, as their descriptors are more interesting than any I would use. At least on Facebook they list their genre as postindiefolkelectropopcore, and this is in the bio:

"Made up of comic book nerds, ex theater geeks and a few music theory snobs, This Good Robot is an 6-piece Science-Fiction/Indie-Rock band out of Long Island, NY. Pay attention, this song could save your life."

Personally I disagree with the "electro" in the genre line. There is a lot of acoustic, and while there certainly are times when they are plugged in, the term as generally used implies a greater emphasis on synthesizer than I hear. Their keyboards sound like actual piano. I would totally agree with simply postindiefolkpopcore.

Using my own descriptors, my first thought was that there is a real carnival atmosphere, with a feeling of wandering down a sideshow. It is amusing, but there is also an air of mystery and transience - maybe even some danger. The other thing it reminded me of was The Nightmare Before Christmas.

There is a sense of motion rather like a roller coaster on some songs, particularly "Woe is Barnaby Black" and some of "Call the Police", but there is a lot of rock in there as well. Even my favorite track, "The Human I Am", at first listen sounds like a quieter track, but there are some strong textures building and taking center stage on the bridge. It's an interesting mix, and it could easily be called eclectic, but then based on their bio, that sounds like what you should expect. Probably.

While there are no regular music videos on the Youtube channel, there is a fair amount of performance footage, as well as non-performance footage. It is interesting to watch them go back and forth between being really powerful performers and conversing as basically unassuming nerds (not a pejorative).

So it's a fun band, and worth checking out. Music is available via iTunes and Amazon, and tonight they play with Andrew WK and Patent Pending in Amityville, but I don't see any other scheduled show for a while.






*Re the summoning, one friend has expressed a desire for a lineup consisting of frnkiero andthe cellabration, Science, and This Good Robot. It sounds good, and also sounds more probable than Science or This Good Robot making it out to Portland. So, that show, and me being able to go to it, would work, and I invoke it! That being said, I can totally imagine them sharing a bill with Gogol Bordello.

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