Hey Mercedes
"Everynight Fire Works" CD (Vagrant)
Breathy, melodic emo which, unsurprisingly, sounds an awful lot like Braid. It sounds awfully twee and terribly precious; maybe I'm just getting old and jaded, but I'm past the days of liking records because they expressed sentiments that I would have appreciated in high school. Perhaps this album is intended for younger people with less complicated problems and maybe it sounds like a half-assed, more polished and professional version of Cap'n Jazz because that's easier to swallow. In pretty much every way possible, I suspect that I really should like this, but it sounds too much like its influences; there's not enough here aside from its pedigree to distinguish it – and in my book, it's never been about who you once were, nor does the past buy much patience in the present. It's all about the present and the potential for the future – from that perspective, Hey Mercedes fails these ears now and they are unlikely to give this band another chance.