800Beloved - Bouquet

A slow night spent in the bedroom. And the kitchen, actually. Doris and I made an amazing chicken tortilla soup, minus the tortilla. Fat, happy, buzzing slightly from a couple beers and a glass of wine. Let's get to it...

Today's album: 800Beloved - Bouquet (Self-released? 2009)
Genre: Shoegaze, Goth-pop
Running time: 11 tracks, 46:06
In a nutshell: Punky shoegaze tailored for a new generation of goth

1. Show Me Evil
2. Colours
3. The Skeleton Collection
4. Mortgage Your Organs
5. Go
6. Yesterday Tomorrow
7. Kiss Me Crooked
8. Your High School Photo
9. The Devil Etc.
10. Galaxies
11. Cut Flowers

This album would fit in quite nicely on a Hot Topic CD rack. Bouquet is bread-and-butter teenage music, gloomy and anguished, but somehow fast-paced and energetic. The pop-punk drumming doesn't let the pace slack for even one track.

The saving grace for me on this album is the production. There are enough neat fuzzy guitar effects and interesting synth textures to make the songs enjoyable in shuffle. I particularly enjoyed the buzzsaw guitar stabs in Kiss Me Crooked, or the Shieldsesque warped riffs on opening track Show Me Evil.

But the album as a whole can be too much. The lyrics range from sad-sack, to uncomfortably gothic. Take Mortgage Your Organs for example, in which frontman Sean Lynch sings Spread your legs wide/this may hurt, but you won't feel a thing. Too much, man. Too much. I won't even go into details about the barforama that it is Your High School Photo. Your worst guesses won't be far off, trust me.