Review Vault – Polar Dream, mnttab, Dirty Woman

Polar Dream – Follow Me To The Forest
More of lush, cinematic sounds….this time from Mexico.
Polar Dream are a 5 piece that plays  instrumental music in the vein of GSYBE and Mono. In fact, they could almost be mistaken for Mexican cousins of Mono, since both bands write compositions are emotionally charged and moody (and this type of music wouldn’t sound out of place in closing credits of some art-house movie).
Musically, PD  employ as many instruments as possible on “Forest”- from glockenspiels to guitars. And, of course, there’s the prerequisite build-ups/climaxes and endless layers of sound – in short, they creates mazes of sound which are as far removed from regular pop/rock songs as possible.
The only problem that I see with “Forest” is that it doesn’t do anything to separate itself from the rest of peers and demonstrate a little bit of its own character/personality. Otherwise, its nearly flawless in its execution.
mnttab – Shiny Stones And Miracles EP
Now this one was really painful to sit through / listen to…
I wasn’t sure what I was listening to at first – it’s just a chaotic mess of guitar sounds and random screams (I could call them vocals, but that wouldn’t be fair). Something resembling actual music starts by track 3 – “Harry Rees” – with its Sonic Youth-ish central riff/motive, but one OK track hardly makes for 3 bad/atrocious ones.
There are some good ideas in there, but they’re just lost in all the attempts at cramming as many things as possible into every single song and then pretending that it would just add mystery to tracks. See, noise-rock/experimental stuff may not necessarily require operatic vocals or incredible guitar playing skills, but it doesn’t mean that you can just randomly throw stuff at the wall and expect it to stick either.
Can’t polish a turd/awful record, guys and this one stinks really bad.
Dirty Woman – Demon Lover
“Crowned By Nothingness” – the opener on “Demon Lover” from DW – is a funny track (although its unlikely that this was intentional). It sounds like the band accidentally covered “Give It Away” while replacing rapping with regular vocals. It’s the same bass line and I can’t shake the feeling that Flea is standing somewhere around the corner from the band’s studio  and waits for members to show up, so that he could take them to court.
Also, the band’s vocalist tend to sound over-dramatic and resembles Scott Stapp (had he sang in a stoner band, of course). Otherwise, guitar/drum playing is decent, but everything on this album screams “average” – from its  title to song themselves.