Living Room – Moonchaser

I can safely say that since embarking on this music hobby I have vastly broadened my musical horizons.  From starting at a place of safety and comfort – favouring predictable song structures and traditional compositions – I’ve grown to appreciate the excitement and suspense of less conventional offerings.  But as I’ve also learned, simply doing things differently doesn’t necessarily equate with doing them “better.”  Countless bands try their hands at reinventing the wheel each year.  For every Sad & French there’s five more iterations of Bloom or Two Knights.

That’s where self proclaimed Brooklyn “dreamo” act Living Room comes in.  A band that obviously enjoys throwing convention to the wind, they combine elements of math rock, La Dispute-style screamo, and fluttery Topshelf Records inspired chords.  Upon first glance the experiment seems new and enticing, but upon further inspection of the Brooklyn four-piece’s full-length debut, Moonchaser, comes across as a frustrating and jumbled concoction.

Taking inspiration from the early 00’s emo scene, when everyone wanted to be like Buddy Neilson and Senses Fail, the band plays a whiny, grating brand of emo with far too many frayed edges to foster enjoyment.  Vocalist Scott Fitzpatrick offers up a crude, chronically out of tune series of yelps and drawn-out screams that sound like the bastard child of a one night stand between The Menzingers and a hybrid of Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) and My Iron Lung.  “American Levitation” and “Casual Science” actually open the disc up on a stomachable combination of all of the above, but once the band starts letting loose with “The Physics Of Intention” his voice begins to fray in all the wrong directions.  When reaching for highs in “Aura Camera,” Fitzpatrick hits the ceiling early and indiscriminately splatters his vocal chords all over the track.  He hardly fares much better in the early sonic lull of “Out Of Love.”  Indulgent passages like “you let me stay in your bed / we kept our clothes on like last time,” tug at listeners like an annoying pubescent boy fantasizing about the opposite sex.  The songs remain very consistent across the disc, leaving listeners with little refuge from Fitzpatrick’s cracking whines.

Instrumentally, Moonchaser feels far removed from Fitzpatrick’s high strung personality.  Full of twinkling crescendos and heavily calculated patterns brimming with guitar overlay, the band sounds as if they should be playing to an entirely different end.  Notes leading songs like “Feet Of Snow” and “Magnetic Service” land with expert precision as they spike and fall like an economist’s line-graph.  Yet, even their obvious ability doesn’t prevent the guitars from coming across robotically.  The math rock inspiration makes for a very angular listen, but it’s as if the quartet entered the studio for a marathon jam session and forgot to include the vocalist in the master plan (a curious statement considering that the band prides themselves on collaborative musicianship).  For all of Fitzpatrick’s overbearing emotions, most of the music feels cold and distant.  

Moonchaser makes Living Room out to be a talented group of musicians that slipped up when putting it all together.  Math rock bands like to get down to the minutia and technicalities, and in this regard Living Room certainly delivers, but audiences will be left scratching their head when looking for a bigger picture.  Perhaps that was the intent behind Fitzpatrick’s over the top delivery, but rather than draw listeners in, his brash outbursts stand to drive them further away.  Even listeners with open minds will likely shut their ears to this one.