Record Review: Slender Means: Adrift in the Cosmos
Written by Russ Crandall   
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 12:12
Adrift in the Cosmos is the second album by Seattle indie pop band Slender Means. I first heard about these guys because Sonny Votolato plays guitar for them, and you know how I like me some Votolatos. I was impressed with their debut album, Neon & Ruin, for several reasons: it was light, catchy, short (32 minutes) and inoffensive. It was one of those albums that you could play at a party and about halfway through everyone would start asking about the band. It's the kind of music that you can easily tune out, only to wake up one day needing it. Crack on a disc. I hadn't heard anything about them for several years, but that doesn't mean they weren't doing anything; they released an EP called Rock & Roll EP in 2007, and Adrift in the Cosmos was released in November of last year. Somehow, they had fallen off my radar until just recently, and I was happy to jump right into a new album.

On first listen, it seems like little has changed for the band. The songs are still silky smooth, with fun vocal twists and hooks. There are some moments that really stand out for me, like in "Pitch a Fit", when singer Josh Dawson references the Puget Sound by name; living the first twenty years of my life in Washington state, I was delighted to hear my old stomping grounds mentioned so nonchalantly. And that's when I realized what exactly draws me to this band - it's a group of Washingtonians making music for Washingtonians. I can't explain it, but there's something distinctly PNW about these guys. A friend of mine (yes, a Washingtonian) mentioned once that listening to Slender Means is like listening to The Mountain (KMTT, 103.7 FM), an easy-listening station in, you guessed it, Washington. Although he meant it as an insult, I took it a different way. In as much as The Mountain is comforting for people typing out their days in cubicles all over the Western half of the state, Slender Means is comforting to me because it makes me feel like I'm back home again.

Musically, the album tends to stay within a slightly-swaggering realm of indie rock, but with so much polish that it can't be called anything but pop. I noticed a bulkier instrumentation this time around, and tracks like "Serving Time" and "Pioneers" are more led by the band's dual guitar breakdowns than Dawson's vocals, which is a nice break from the norm. Many sophomore albums are criticized for being more of the same, and though this may be true for these guys, I mean that in the most pleased way possible. All in all, this is an album that shows that Slender Means hasn't gone away, no sir, and we're all a bit better for it.


"Ship Wrecked" from Rock & Roll EP
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