shortcut: [Album2400627]
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| Artist | Hyder Ali |
| Type | EP |
| Released | March 20, 2009 |
| Rating |
3.44 from 2 ratings
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| 1 | Every Now & Then | | 4:26 | | 2 | Sunrise Philosopher | | 3:11 | | 3 | If I Had | | 3:25 | | 4 | Careless Talk | | 3:22 | | 5 | Paper Dolls | | 4:49 |
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Nodima
 Good; recommended for fans.
Digital
[Rating25982746]
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Careless Talk [EP] (Produced by Hyder Ali) [Self-Released 2009]
1|Every Now & Then|4:26 4.5 - 5
2|Sunrise Philosopher|3:11 3 - 3.75
3|If I Had|3:25 3 - 3.5
4|Careless Talk|3:22 3 - 3.25
5|Paper Dolls|4:49 3.5 - 4
Song dates itself at 2006. Wonder how old the rest of this is.
Overall: 18 - 18.5 3.65/5 72 - 74%: Impressive; well above average; TRY IT
Well, this just came up on shuffle and I'm pretty happily impressed. Eric Blair is definitely trying to get his Brother Ali/Slug on, and during the first track I actually thought it was possibly a duet between the two before I could check. He's a little derivative but he's picked good people to copy, and it's saying something that he could fool me for a little. Can be a valuable trick for singles trying to grab attention. The real draw to this album, though, is it's live band element. Everyone remains surprised the format hasn't gotten bigger in the face of the Roots' critical success, but it probably just doesn't seem very easy. Hyder Ali don't seem to be worried about easy, though, since they're not even trying to pretend they're a hip-hop band. Sure, "If I Had" starts with slow, barely-present music with an intro verse that leads into a burst of drums that continues the verse towards the chorus and then drops the drums again. We've heard that in hip-hop before. But Robert Mulrennan is playing post-rock, alt. country-style guitar under the rap and drums, while Edwin Scherer gets awfully close to applying Interpol's bouncy rhythm section to the white boy rap canon.
I think that Hyder Ali has a ways to go before they find their true identity, though. Even as "If I Had" comes across as an impressive idea, it also still sounds like the obvious result of someone rapping on top of post rock. Life's not working out, music is brooding, etc. You can just tell pretty easily that the group is going for something big and important, to the point that they're more than a little self-defeating at times. The album opener is possibly the perfect fusion the two sounds this group is trying to bring together, but the rest just doesn't connect like that. While a promising idea, the group doesn't currently show many signs of being more than two highly appealing gimmicks glued together skillfully. It works a a five song EP, but I'm not sure how these guys will do on an album. I'm definitely going to be paying attention though, because with the right amount of growth Hyder Ali could grow to become something interesting and special. Or they could latch onto a niche market similar to Doomtree or Rhymesayers and make do with what they've got - who knows how long Minneapolis can continue to support itself like that, though. |
distribution | most recent
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Good; recommended for fans. | | Digital |
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rym
