The Gifts of Happenstance Reviews
Time Out New York
The sappy, reverb-swathed pop songs on the Motel Creeps’ new self-released CD, The Gifts of Happenstance, are nicely driving and dreamy…
20 Minutes to Kill Decibel Level
[20 Minutes to Kill]If you're into the current indie rock scene, you've likely got a lot of records in your collection that sound pretty similar. And you can safely categorize any new band you pick up in town or download off the web by comparing them to some other band you're already listening to.
Sure, that's a generalization — but isn't always a nice surprise when you hear something you like that doesn't really fit anywhere? The best bands are the ones that sound, more or less, like themselves. Guided by Voices sounds like Guided by Voices. The New Pornographers sounds like the New Pornographers. And I must say that the Motel Creeps, this unsigned band from the Big Apple, pretty much sounds like the Motel Creeps. Yeah, I guess I can hear the whole "shoegazer" influence and the consequent comparisons to Echo and the like, but I'm really not hearing too many bands doing anything like what the Creeps are doing right now.
And they do it quite well, especially singer Greg Welch, who is a star in the making and the centerpiece on a set of well-written and expertly-produced tracks where vocal ability actually matters. His voice is effortlessly dynamic and his delivery just about perfect on tracks like "The Florist" and "Loose Lips" (my two favorites); and his melodies are often like the yin to Eric Butler's lead guitar yang, and sometimes vice versa.
Other stand-out songs include "Leave without a Sound" (with its absolutely contagious chorus) and the album's last track, "History", in which Welch sings "We are history; we are making history". It could go either way, I suppose. But I am banking on the latter.