The Icks Devil cassette
Second five-song cassette released by this Florida three-piece punk outfit. Similar to the first tape, this follow-up is almost painfully lo-fi. Unfortunately, this does detract a bit from the songs, making it difficult to discern exactly what’s going on. While I find the attempt to do an analog recording right onto a stereo tape deck incredibly commendable (and a hell of a lot more real than doing a crummy cell-phone-recorded demo), there is a learning curve and obvious limitations with such an approach. In terms of the songs themselves, the first three are driving, mid-tempo grunge-inspired punk songs with somewhat lazy vocal delivery, “Nice Things” being the clear standout of the bunch. From here, the tape changes lanes completely, bringing us an artistic, quirky spoken word/bass interlude, and finally an acoustic, open-mic-style bedroom pop song. All in all, I’m just left more confused than anything else after listening to this release. Oh, also, having to do research to figure out that a release is on a tape label is a bizarre move. Why wouldn’t the label releasing something just put their label name somewhere on the tape or the artwork?