Movies with Heroes - The Slate

Revie by: Jennifer Perkins

ACT ONE: Enter a three piece band from Lancaster, PA with good old fashioned Christian values and a silly name: Mack, the Coffee Man. They are good and gather a decent local following for themselves.

ACT TWO: Mack is written out of the script. The band adds a new cast member and changes their name to Movies with Heroes.

ACT THREE: The band releases The Slate, a 5 song CDEP that ends up in the hands of Naughty Secretary Club for review.

Those are the cliff notes, here is the full story.

Movies with Heroes are an Indie Rock band, plain and simple. Who knew plain old Indie music was still being made. The songs on The Slate are well crafted, guitar oriented and fairly mellow for the most part. The songs though emotional, do not even hint at a Midwestern sound which was refreshing.

The first of the 5 songs on the CD was my favorite, “Hurricanes and Runaways”. Very upbeat and catchy. I like the way the drums have been mixed in (the CD was produced by a guy who has worked with Sunny Day Real Estate, so he must know what he is doing). Another great song on the CD was “Screenplay”, this song is a slower track that seems to play with the bands name. “Heroes must be strong, and heroes must be honest” is repeated over and over in the lyrics. There is a nice addition of what sounds like a xylophone, but it could be a keyboard as well.

Movies with Heroes show a ton of promise, and I expect to be hearing a lot of good things about them. They are part of a handful of bands breathing new life back into good old fashioned Indie rock. Movies with Heroes have a little way to go on honing their sound to perfection, but listening to the learning process on The Slate proves to be quite enjoyable.