Lakewood - Typhoon

Lakewood

Typhoon
self-released; 2015

3.6 out of 5

By Mike Przygoda

Typhoon by Lakewood is an interesting debut EP, incorporating dream pop and indie rock into short concise catchy songs.   

“Strathcona” opens the EP, built around a distant reverbed guitar line over broken down programmed drums. The song manages to straddle both the dance-y beats and indie rock drive with great use of dynamics and the bringing in and out of various instruments. There are some great vocal harmonies throughout, interesting scansion and sweeping synth effects.

“Ghost” is a dream-pop song with floating chime-y guitars and an appropriately ghostly vocal melody on top. Here the bass really shines with some great contrapuntal lines to the voice and guitar, interweaving and propelling the song along. It would be nice to hear a bit more dynamics in the vocal delivery; some build in the chorus to really sell the lyrics.

“Storm” opens with some time signature shifts that a guitar riff navigates through. The mixed meter returns in the chorus, which is a bit disorienting, but perhaps plays into the title of the song. Some additional vocal effects add a trippiness to what’s going on and it’s a neat effect although it does feel like it’s only scratching the surface of where the band could go. The ideas are there, it would just be nice to hear them go even further into disorientating the listener and really playing with the melodic arc over the bars. Still, there are many catchy elements to the song.

“Typhoon” is a short instrumental, based off of synths and reversed guitar emulating boxed glass. It is a nice mood setter, but again, it could really be elaborated upon and built up into something. It’s a quick fleeting moment, but interesting enough to warrant it being longer and developed.

“Stories We Told” closes the EP with some pseudo Afro-beat guitars.  The interweaving lines are quite interesting, chiming well together and having some great individual melodic interest while giving the effect together of being greater than the sum of their parts. The melody is catchy and it’s a nice closer for the EP.

The band has talent and the songwriting is good. It’ll be interesting to see as they go forward how they trust their instincts more and dive further into their talents and their songwriting to develop their songs even more.

Become A Fan

bandcamp

Tweet