Garden – One for the Team Garden – One for the Team

Someone Else’s Knife – One for the Team Someone Else’s Knife – One for the Team

One for the Team (for their MySpace page click here) released their third full-length album on March 16th with very high expectations, and I’m happy to say that they’ve provided us an album that, despite starting rather slow, is in its entirety a great listen. The hard pounding guitar along with the soft dual vocals of Ian Anderson and Grace Fiddler provide a unique that builds off the acclaim their last album received.

While the vocals and keyboard provide an overtone of the pop feeling throughout the album, the thing that hooked me was the hard, and almost heavy, guitar undertones throughout the songs. The perfect example for this is Ha Ha, with its dreamy vocals and heavy, distorted guitar. I felt as if the guitar was in drop D the entire song, providing incredibly strong power chords that, in combination with the uplifting and whimsical vocals, gave me my favorite song on the album.  I also got the feeling that I should go out and do some crazy shit.

While there are plenty of good songs on the album, one constant thing that kept nagging me was that throughout the entire album, the vocals kept being overpowered by by the music, making it hard for me to get the meaning from the lyrics. Another thing that kept nagging at me was the snare. In almost every song, the snare seemed to blast at me every other beat without fail. If the snare is going to be so loud, please for the love of god mix it up every now and then with more then a single stroke and provide some variety.

There is already plenty of symbolism in the album and a little more variety from the percussion set would go a long ways.  For giving us another good indie pop album that rocks out with its heavy metal, grung-esque guitars and beautiful dual vocals, I give this album 3.5 bees out of 5. Its a great album to listen to but having some experience on the set, I know there’s room to improve musically that would take One for the Team to the next level.