It’s hard to put a finger on Big Emotion, the latest release by Mouse Fire.
The album is clearly dance rock, but it falls somewhere between Hockey (the more indie side of things) and Cobra Starship (the more whatever you define Cobras Starship as). The problem is this midpoint Mouse Fire has landed on is shaky ground, never establishing a firm foothold on either the side of the slightly over-thought hipster rock or that of blissfully careless teen pop. The band seems to be pulled by each end of the spectrum, and unfortunately staying in the middle just doesn’t sound great.
Mouse Fire employs a cavalcade of sounds. While the guitar riffs are funky and fun, the synth is the driving force of the album, mostly for the worse. The production has resulted in a sound that is incredibly glossy. It lacks any warmth and doesn’t let the listener grasp anything fully. To underscore this point, I didn’t realize the acoustic-based “But, It’s Not What You Think” was in fact an acoustic track until it was directly pointed out to me via band’s bio on the Lujo Records’ website. The production and surrounding synths completely bury the simple emotional humanity of the acoustic guitar.
Oddly enough, the best track is probably the messiest of the bunch, “True, I May Have Lost It.” It combines random rattles and multiple key sounds into something that is just chaotic enough to work. The eccentricity isn’t as frustratingly middling.
For an album titled Big Emotion, it doesn’t seem to have much of a heart. Expressions of girl problems abound in the lyrics, but over such cheery beat they mostly ring hollow. The chorus of “Don’t Mess With A Texan” features the line, “You got in my head and now I’m fucked up, and I don’t think I’m ever gonna love again.” Perhaps delivered softly with a Bright Eyes-esque backdrop those words might have an impact, but over electronic grooves they are punchless.
Maybe Big Emotion will be thrown on as the background music to a party, and people will dig it. But that’s probably the best it can do – background filler noise for a party soon forgotten.
Review Score: 3.5
*Originally written for AbsolutePunk.net*
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