Album Review: A Big Pile Of Leaves - Have You Seen My Prefrontal Cortex?

A Big Pile Of Leaves might be considered in the same league as art/indie rock legends ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead and The Arcade Fire. In fact, they could arguably be placed somewhere in the middle, meddling the former's reverb-phile epicness with the latter's sense of dramatics and song structures.

Their album 'Have You Seen My Prefrontal Cortex?' seems to have been recorded with the reverb setting on 11, allowing little other effects to come into the mixing process. While some will not find this a fault, I am of the belief that it works as a double-edged dagger.

The album kicks off with a nice quatuor of noise-rock(esque) verses and choruses of epic ambitions in the likes of album stand-outs "Great Fun" and "Alligator Bop", both packing enough energy and spirit to cover their faults. However, from then on, the songs are a cocktail of a weird cereal-related half-bossanova song ("Bring Back Breakfast"), an instrumental mid-track ("Race Car Driving") and only a few flairs of authentic goodness ("I Will Gobble You Up", "A Few Screws Loose").

It's hard to tell where they are going with all this, but if the opening four tracks are anything to stand by, the band have enough potential to make a follow-up album worthy of a listen. Maybe once they've ironed out some of their seemingly overacted weirdness. For people who like their "indie" drenched in noise rock influences and milk.

2.5/5

'Have You Seen My Prefrontal Cortex?' by A Big Pile Of Leaves is released on June 22nd, as a 11 track free download and a 13 track physical release.

A Big Pile Of Leaves on MySpace and Facebook.
Official Website

James Berclaz-Lewis