Tarebo - Mystery at Corners

Tarebo

Mystery at Corners
Tarebo7; 2015

3.4 out of 5

By Ted Rogen

Danny Waters and Kenneth Byrne are a duo from Ireland who make up Tarebo. Byrne and Waters have carved out a niche for themselves with their recent release Mystery at Corners. The music is cloaked in a veil of darkness and the lyrics only reinforce the immediate feeling that the palettes of tones impose.

Even though the theme of darkness prevails throughout the entirety of the album that doesn't mean it isn’t dynamic and versatile. Mystery at Corners starts with a three-part series of songs called The Blood Chronicles. First up is “A Darker Side” which is some of the band's best work. I was reminded of the band The Clientele at times and to a lesser extent Radiohead. Either way the song jams a lot during the five-plus-minute of the track. There is a glorious, dissonant breakdown at around the halfway point and the main groove is certainly easy to bob your head to and get down with. 

The next “Transaction” revolves around a couple of acoustic guitars, drums and vocals. Unfortunately, the song isn't in the same league as the first. The recording almost sounds live and the music reminded me of a cheesy ‘80s ballad at times. The band continues with acoustic guitar on “Absence of Empathy” but everything works much better this time around. My only complaint was that the vocals sounded boxy. 

The band sounds really good when they go down the chasm of darkness and have some similarities to Portishead and Massive Attack like they do on ”I Hear Voices.” The second half of the song is particularly sublime which combines trip-hop style drums with atmospherics pads. “Mystery at Corners” has a bit of Maroon 5 thing going on that I wasn’t expecting while “Fighting with Gravity” sounds like a theme song for a Disney movie.

Mystery at Corners does a good job at uniting darkness as a theme but unfortunately the band's genre hopping creates an inconsistent experience. The band attempts a number of different styles and sometimes succeeds and other times don’t. Mystery at Corners has all the hallmarks of a band in the embryonic stage not sure what they want to do. Overall, Mystery at Corners is a solid effort with a number of notable songs. That being said, they are going to need to do some digging as to what type of music they want to play with their next release. 

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