John Bemis
Reporter
@bemiscourant
Tenacity is essential to any modern musical act. Beyond evident in their discography, musical tag-team Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi have proved that keeping busy means staying inspired. Releasing five rock-solid LP’s in four years with indie scuzz-rock outfit The Men, leaving each record starkly contrasted in tonal flavor no longer seems like a challenge. In their debut record, side-project Dream Police show Mark and Nick without any lack of ideas, churning new-wave rock n’ roll revivalism through The Men’s modern catharsis, crafting an LP that, outside of it’s undeniably sweet moments, comes off as somewhat undercooked.
The first noticeable shift in dynamic is that Dream Police sound like a fine-tuned machine. All of the grime and rough edges of the most recent Men album are sanded down, and the burning guitars, punching drum machines and robotic synths remain skeletal and impenetrable. The title track opens the album with a two chord power-pop vamp, stomping hard yet repetitively until it burns out. My Mama’s Dead, the second track, follows suit, a grinding bassline on loop as hasty guitar licks and noises are thrown about. Sonically, the result is coy and subversive yet show a lack of compositional refinement despite their tightened texture. This new, impressively polished techno-rock sheen just barely makes up for the lack of interesting songwriting on these opening tracks, yet is gratifying in its own right.
Thankfully, Hypnotized takes a harmonic turn for the better on the song Iris. The song’s metallically acoustic leads vibrate out in a way that is enveloping and enticing as cold synthesizers hang in the air. It is stagnantly captivating and meditative, an example of the creativity that bleeds out of Nick and Mark as they attempt to work their masculine energy into more androgynous territory. Pouring Rain and All We Are are equally reminiscent of both A Flock of Seagulls and Ride, throwing Post-Punk revival and Shoegaze onto their sonic palette. Both are enjoyable yet instantly forgettable, neither containing enough velocity to deliver a satisfying punch. Despite the generally tasteful delivery of these varying styles, the lack of effective movement in terms of songwriting throughout the record suggests that Dream Police may just be a way for The Men to accommodate more eclectic urges.
There are some moments, though, where a sense of carefully irregular form enters the picture. John’s stop-and-go strut moves through a blues verse and spacey chorus, juxtaposing familiar country-rock with a touch of atomic psychedelia, resulting in the most thoroughly intriguing track on the LP. Let It Be is admirably ambitious in how it effortlessly glides along, gaseous synths giving way to post-rock guitar phrasing over a pumping drum and bass rhythm. The LP ends on Sandy, a reverberating folk duet offering a warm, personal touch to close an album so introspectively mechanic.
On Hypnotized, new styles and sounds beget a cleaner, perhaps less youthfully sporadic imagery and aesthetic, yet leave behind, for the most part, a sense of meaningful form. Throughout the LP new sonic techniques give off the pleasant feeling of evolution yet lack motion within each individual track. It’s almost as if Dream Police are running in place in brand-new track gear. Listening to Hypnotized, it’s fairly clear that Mark and Nick are satisfied in experimenting with new colors, yet the material that is put to canvas is a touch too formulaic.
Rating: 6/10
