The Kev - Train Tracks

Hear The Track Here

Almost a year ago I reviewed a track called Fuel The Greed (August 2005) from an artist called Killwevin. Wasn't a bad track exactly, just not good enough considering the kind of competition it would be up against, and that is what I said in my review. However, I was fairly complimentary about the track, in my usual begrudging way, and not having seen hide or hair of the band since then I thought they had gone the way of all things, ie kaput. Welp, here is one of the members of that band, one Kevin Murray to be precise working under a new name.

See what a little research can do? You know it makes sense.

Train Tracks turns out to be in a remarkably similar vein to Fuel The Greed, it being a reasonable mix of guitar pop, a little bit of punk and as lo-fi and monophonic as you would expect. Not that either lofi or mono are that much of a problem when you are looking for a quick aural kick in the pants and if you like the Alternative field, I'm sure you will find quite a lot about this track to like too. Again, though, I feel I have to make the same point I made in my original review, the overall Soundclick (nay almost everywhere these days) audience has become increasingly sophisticated over the past few years and now regularly expect what they download to be as good as any commercial music - in terms of both material and production.

As far as the material goes, Train Tracks is a very enjoyable song (yep song. Verse one, verse, two, verse three) and - liking a bit of whimsical English proto-punk - I found the track very listenable. It has all the right moves about it for sure. You can sing along to it, it has some incredibly simple but catchy lead lines, and it makes sense although the third was a bit too busy for my taste, as well as being a bit strained vocally. It goes without saying that what really let's it down is the overall sound which is thin, weedy and incredibly one dimensional. When you have duelling guitars, believe me you need a bit of space in the mix to make them really count. The same could be said, I guess, of the vocals which could sound so, so much better. Still, that's perfect world stuff and this is Soundclick so this is what we get. Putting those niggles aside though, there is a reallty decent track here. I really liked the first couple of verses, but after that I felt it kinda lost that initial feel.

Lofi guitar pop with a certain charm.