Seafood - Surving the Quiet - Big Wheel Recreation

Review by: Jennifer Perkins

Who are these people and where have they been my whole musical life? Last week I wouldn't know Seafood if they bit me on the ass, this week I am wondering, how have I missed these guys? According to their one sheet, they were all over the Indie presses a few years back. Thank God Surviving the Quiet, Seafood's debut full length, has been brought to my attention.

Surviving the Quiet was apparently released last year on London's Fierce Panda Records. Musical masterminds Big Wheel Recreation have brought the release stateside for American consumption. I think it is interesting to note that the cover art as well as song order is different for each release. The band has a myriad of sounds and apparently judging on their choice for opening tracks to the CD they thought their Sonic Youth side suited them better overseas and their low-fi Indie side would win them listeners in the states.

One of the best things about this band is that they seem a little confused about the style of music they are intending to create. Many bands make this fatal mistake and end up sounding as if they have spread themselves too thin and never manage to hone one style. This is completely untrue with this British quartet. Seafood is a multi-facetted band fully capable of making many sounds work and many genres seem like their own. They can go from melodic to chaotic in the blink of an eye and make it seem completely natural.

As other reviews before mine have mentioned, this band may be from London but they are looking to the west for musical influences. Looking to bands like Pavement, in particular. One fellow European that actually came to mind when listening to Seafood was Scottish band, Yatsura. However, they too sounded very jaded by American college radio.

Creating a perfect distorted melody is no small feat and usually left in the hands of pedal aficionados such as J. Masics. Yet somehow Seafood manage to wrangle these two seemingly at odds elements. The fuzzy-ness in the mix is augmented rather than hidden by producer Ian McCutcheon, who you might remember from Mojave 3.

The diversity in sound is Seafood's biggest selling point, their hat tip to Indie rock giants of yesteryear does not hurt my opinion of them either. Seafood's musical spectrum seems to be large and encompassing of a wide range of sounds. These dynamics show the listener what this band is capable of, and from the sound of Surviving the Quiet they are capable of quite a bit.

Read where Big Wheel Recreation got their name from here.