CD: Where the Angels Crowd to Listen Artist:Driving On City Sidewalks Label: Count your Lucky Stars/Red Plane Records Rating: 2.5/5 Best Song:Tear, Repeair Reviewer: Cole Faulkner

Ontario’s Driving On City Sidewalks are relative newcomers to the ambient indie scene.  And after what their bio sheet describes as a “painstakingly constructed” journey, the band debuts with Where Angels Crowd To Listen, a lengthy, five-song journey.  The EP spans 28 minutes of ups and downs, including two instrumental tracks, and three featuring an array of vocal styles.  There is a distinct Straylight Run quality to the tracks, but I think the band is more abstract in their approach.

The album opens with “To Finish the Race,” an escalating five-minute journey of shimmering guitars and echoy drum beats.  Vocalist Darryl Silvestri moans his way through the track, with the band looking to the power of post-rock repetition when conveying their emotional aspirations.  It works, but at partially backfires when the track’s concluding fade-out leaves the listener hanging for something more substantive.  The following track, “Where the Angels Crowd to Listen,” feels far more fulfilling.  Joining Silvestri’s monotone drone comes a rather jarring breakdown, as if ripped right from a hardcore band, and the soft contrast of barely audible female guest vocalist.  The final vocal track, “Tear, Repair,” is a quiet, minimalist acoustic piece sounding much like early acoustic Brand New material.  It’s not terribly exciting, and the depressing subject matter is a downer, but Silvestri ultimately demonstrates that he can hold his own without fancy distortion or backups. 

The final two instrumentals cumulatively make up the last fifteen minutes – or over half the album’s runtime.  The bio sheet describes these two as speaking to the duo’s “instrumental prowess.”  While they certainly showcase the Driving On City Sidewalks’ capability to intertwine emotion and melody, they ultimately run into the same problem plaguing the album’s opening composition.  Particularly the final track, “Farewell to Knowing it All,” just sort of lingers for most of its eight minutes.  What it comes down to is that the final two tracks feel almost unnecessary.  The point they’re trying to make has already been proven during the EP’s first half – and with vocals at that – so the instrumentals simply feel like overkill.

All said and done, Where the Angels Crowd To Listen really grabbed me for two tracks.  “Tear, Repair,” and the title track make Driving On City Sidewalks out to be promising addition to the ambient indie-rock scene.  But taken as a whole, the EP doesn’t engage the listener nearly enough.  I often felt like an ignored background object, rather than a welcome listener.  The band has a formula for a great album, but just needs to find the right delivery for realizing their vision.