Brilliant Colors
Introducing
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Label: Slumberland
The distance of time, for better or for worse, enables scenes and aesthetics to take on more weight and cache than they ever enjoyed in their actual eras. Punk, for instance, is now perceived as a truly independent, culturally massive force that has since been appropriated, when in reality, it was as much a commodity at its beginnings as it is now, lest we forget that its entrance into notoriety began with a beautifully greedy boutique owner's run-ins with the delinquents who frequented his shop. That dreamy lens of history isn't necessarily a bad thing from a creative standpoint, it's just that there's an inherent danger in missing the context of a movement when you boil it down to a simple essence. Take this proposition: If Slumberland's signing of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart indicated that the label's vintage aesthetic had a future, even as it looked firmly towards its interpretation of punk's past, then Brilliant Colors' Introducing could rightly be seen as proof that the same aesthetic in the wrong hands is more often a cumbersome burden than a well of creativity.
Introducing sounds like any number of NME or Mojo-compiled punk history give-away discs: painfully bright, dirty guitars, basslines buried in the mix until the hook comes along and vocals eschewing melody for passionate sloganeering (albeit of the female variety this time around). If you're 13, it's a godsend, a gateway drug to the real aesthetes. Ten years on and you realize how shallow it actually is, the tracks so similar you could shuffle the entire album in any number of combinations and no one would notice the difference. Worse, Brilliant Colors are so obvious about their influences that listening to the album becomes less a listening experience and more a game of guessing the ingredients.
For "Motherland," take two parts early Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees, throw in the rhythms of proto-punks Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers around the "Roadrunner" era and take the production values of both down a significant notch or two. "English Cities" is just a dose of the Adverts for the verses and then a cup of the Buzzcocks for the chorus. "Should I Tell You" reaches a little further ahead in history and grafts the La's to "Another Girl, Another Planet"-style garage pop. Conveniently it features the same chords and structure, more or less, as opening track "I Searched."
Music doesn't have to be new or innovative to be good, of course, as the Pains of Being Pure at Heart so ably proved on the same label. But it does need to be more than the sum of its parts, something with a heart and a purpose. Brilliant Colors lack any relevance or identity: if they were an undiscovered act from the decade they pillage so heartily, they'd be worthy of a cursory glance. At this far removed from their era of choice, they're just a sad copy of the real thing.
by Morgan Davis
