Album Review - I was a lover... "Strong drink is Raging"

I was a Lover Delorean was a Dealer – Strong Drink is Raging

Indie rock today is often a conglomeration of mash-ups. I find myself often describing a band to someone who has never heard them as a combination of BAND “A” and BAND “B” (for instance, I’ve been known to compare the band Cymbals Eat Guitars to a combination of Smashing Pumpkins and Arcade Fire—not the best example, because it doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, but it is a good place to begin the dialog, and you get the idea…). Upon listening to the new album by Ventura, California’s I was a Lover Delorean was a Dealer, I find that I need some new algebra. A + B = C simply does not work for this band.
The opener, “Grey Ships”, kicks the album off on a somewhat experimental note with lots of saxophone and some nice keyboard riffing. It also sets the tone for a vocal performance unlike any you are likely to hear this year. Frontman Christopher Bykowski rages like an unholy marriage of Black Francis and Robert Smith, using his lower register to affect amazing amounts of emotion along with some degree of theatricality. “The Amaretto Was Poisoned” owes a debt to a lot of the dance-rock prevalent today, with echoes (no pun intended) of The Rapture in its driving, guitar-heavy crescendos. “He Has a Dreamy New Convertible” finds a middle ground between the dance-y side of the band and the rawk-ish side—it reminds me of what Interpol might sound like if they decided to have fun with their music every once in a while. For me, the high point of the album is “Chop ‘em at the Hands”: it starts simply, with a deceptively catchy piano melody, then goes to work. No amount of description really does this song justice, so I’ll leave it at that.
Again and again, the rhythm section of Patrick Crowley and Kyle Garcia amazes with its tightness and chemistry, always threatening to take the album over but never overbearing. Dario Slavazza, multi-instrumentalist, also adds a necessary dimension with sax and keyboard/piano, breaking up anything that could turn into a “typical” rock effort with well-placed atmospherics.
Ultimately, while the parts of this album (and, indeed, the band) can be compared to other bands and cross-referenced into the annals of classifiability, the sum of the parts is something completely new and original. So forget your algebra, lest you end up with an equation that would stump Good Will Hunting. Just listen…

--n