Pomegranates
Everybody, Come Outside!
Lujo
I’d class Pomegranates as a type of industrial alt-rock. While I keep thinking of The Cranberries as their fruit-based naming inspiration, the sound features rapidly-changing rhythms mixed in a start/stop mix with the occasional random guitar riff, sporadic drumming, and a very nice vocal arrangement by Joey Cook and Isaac Karns. It’s the vocals that keep this disc from slipping into self-indulgent art rocking, but the slope is crumbly and as we run through the song lineup, often as not the vocals don’t save oddly conceived songs. The phase “quirky pop” comes up on their web site, and while I don’t have any deep-seated issues with quirk, I do have some with the Captain Beefheart sound they fall into on “Southern Ocean” and “Coriander.” There’s skill in this band, and I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assign this effort to “going though a phase” and hope they spin out a hit next time. If you find yourself “going through a phase” this might be the antidote, but I’m not planning to listen to them on my next drive to Atlanta.
Lujo Records: http://www.lujorecords.com
