In all honesty, I was late into emo. And by emo I mean the “real emo”. Bands like American Football, Cap’n Jazz and so on. However, I’ve gotten into it throughout the past two years and as well into the more ‘twinkle daddies’ type of bands as well such as CSTVT.

On first listen with Athaletics, I was a bit confused; rough vocals over all these twiddly melodies just went straight over my head. Like, I really couldn’t get my head around it. However, a few more listens later and it’s sunk in. I suppose with a lot of things when you don’t really expect it, it can take a while to get used to it.

Saying that my general opinion is that this is good stuff. Yeah. Simple as that. I like it. I’m not the biggest fan of emo but I do like this and can appreciate it, and hopefully, you will too. I’m not comparing Wavelets to any other similar bands because like I said, I don’t really know the genre well or what to expect, but listening to this as its own album and it’s own art/expression or creative entity then I can say that I do enjoy it.

However, I do also realise it’s not the best out there. There’s probably better bands who do this sort of thing and as I only really have the many works of Mike Kinsella to compare to, I can only say this album isn’t as good as the majority of his work. There are not many tracks here that really stand out, only a few moments in certain tracks. It’s nothing that will be stuck in your heard for weeks to come.

Still, if you like the aforementioned bands then it’s worth giving the album a listen. It’s not killer material but it’s certainly interesting enough to pass the time.

3/5

‘Athaletics’  by Wavelets is out now on Tiny Engines.

Wavelets links: Facebook | Myspace | Blogspot

Words by Michael Brown.