Search - Aloha :: Light Works

Aloha's Mellowest Effort Yet

Erik Norman | Illinois | 03/12/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"2004's Here Comes Everybody is, IMHO, one of the best albums of the decade so far. One of my desert island disks for sure. It's follow up, Some Echoes is good, though not as great, probably 4 stars as well. Light Works, the new album seems to follow the trend of shedding their jazzy stylings and getting more and more poppy, not that this is necessarily a bad thing. If you trace Aloha's albums from their first EP to this mini-album, that trend becomes evident.



The album kicks off with the album's strongest track, "Body Buzz". It's a wonderful track with a beautiful vocal melody from Tony and an amazing drum part in the chorus from Cale. If the rest of the album had been this good, it easily would have been 5 stars. The next track, "Broken Light" is also pretty decent. A lot more mellow but equally affecting. This is followed by "Trick Spring", easily my least favorite track. It just kind of goes nowhere for me and I find the keyboard melody in the chorus to be downright annoying. "The End" is the other stand-out track for me. It's very bouncy, short, and catchy. Reminds me a lot of The Shins. The next two tracks, "Passengers" and "Gold World" are both in the middle with me. The latter reminds me of early 90s Peter Gabriel, which I like. The closing track, "Equinox" I like quite a bit. It's very ethereal and trance inducing. Quite pretty.



Overall, this is a fine Aloha album. I only wish it was a little longer. If you're new to the band, I would start with Here Comes Everybody, then progress forward from there, going back to check out Sugar, which is also a fine album.



PS: notice how my review and the only other review of this album on Amazon right now are almost completely opposite? I guess it takes all kinds."

I'm so sure it's you

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 01/29/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"For the record, despite the name, Aloha does not have a speck of Hawaii about its music.



Instead, it's a band that makes mournful, vaguely psychedelic pop music, mostly on the acoustic guitar. And while the "Light Works" EP has a slow start with a couple of dud songs, it picks up nicely a few songs in, morphing into a more ethereal, original-sounding experience.



"Hello my friend/I'm so sure it's you again/You've emerged looking worse/But it's nothing we can't mend," Tony Cavallario sings in a pleasant low voice, over a poppy guitar melody. While it's is a lovely little song lyrically, musically it's too forgettable to really register. And that carries over into "Broken Light," a rather confused and meandering pop tune that would be pretty if it ever gelled.



But things start perking up with "Trick Spring," a shimmering little melody that sounds like a guitar vibrating inside a keyboard -- very pretty and vaguely pastoral. They follow it up with a little round of various kinds of pop -- sprightly guitars that start to distort, mellow ringing ballads, and a vaguely jazzy little song at the very end.



Aloha do their best work when they add some kind of unusual edge to their pop -- otherwise it sounds too much like everyone else's music. And while "Light Works" isn't their best collection, it's still a nice, solid little EP of polished pop -- it would be even better if it weren't for those first two songs.



Most of the songs center on a pleasant acoustic guitar riff -- sometimes bouncy, sometimes slow and folky. In "Trick Spring," it ripples like a babbling brook. And they tend to wrap it in soft layers of very, very soft synth that chimes through it like a xylophone, as well as some very laid-back drums in the background. The one exception is "Broken Light," where the drums get aggressive and the synth splays all over.



And Cavallario has a lovely voice -- smooth, mellow and rather open, as if he's telling you his life story over a cup of coffee. And the songs he sings are rather like the music -- not outstanding, but pleasantly reflective and sometimes melancholy ("I have nothing to do/I sit and watch for you/as the rain collects another afternoon/our decay is nearly done...")



"Light Works" doesn't work entirely, but Aloha's latest is a pleasant little collection of pop melodies, marred only by a couple tunes that don't quite work.

"