Colorstore

Bonefish: The Legend of Mahogany Cass

(Stinkweeds)

Record Review by Amber Henson

The music industry is so frustrating because there are great bands who make fun, awesome music, and they do it well ‘cause they’ve been at it for five years, and yet have yet to break through.  I mean, hell, it took Modest Mouse a decade to bust out of Washington.  I wish Colorstore the same luck (though maybe with less drama) to bust out of Phoenix.

Colorstore describes Bonefish: The Legend of Mahogany Cass as “A New Collection of Songs,” which seems pretty apt to me.  This record, at first glance, looks like a theme album, with that Cass name appearing in two of the songs.  But if there is unifying theme, I have yet to figure it out.  Knowing me, I will have a revelation two months after this review is published.

The two songs with Cass in the name are my least favorite songs on the album, one of them being a painful trip though the world of speeding up and slowing down a track annoyingly, the other with a guy that sounds like Boomhauer from King of the Hill speaking unintelligibly while creepy voices laugh in the background.

No thanks.

But the rest of the album is pretty terrific.  Full of Beatles melodies and walls of sound, lead singer and guitarist Mark Erickson leads his band through a treasure trove of electronic heavy, driving beat tracks.

For me, the album never gets as good as it does for the first three tracks: “Moosh,” “Treasure Sticks The Mammal,” and “A Song About…”.  “I’m in love with everything and everyone” is the chorus for “Moosh,” such a sweet and uplifting way to start the album.  Treasure starts with a fun piano and then has the line “My friends they love me, they love me, they love me so much.”  Ooo!  This album is like a lovely little pep talk!  “A Song About” begins with several voices yelling to a crescendo, then has banjo in the background as we are given the information “Fuck is a four letter word.”  Well, thank you.

So some of the album drives me bananas, and some of the album I’ve listened to over and over again.  So does that average things out?  I think so.