Album Review: Les Sages - Share This
When an album arrives in your inbox stating it's for fans of Brand New, Death Cab for Cutie, Say Anything, The Starting Line, Taking Back Sunday. Much interest and intrigue quickly comes apparent. However for Les Sages (pronounced Lay-Sahj), the expectation doesn't quite match up, although 'Share This' does have its strong, captivating moments early on; 'The League War' has twinkling guitars and makes the comparison to Say Anything and Death Cab For Cutie somewhat true. Whilst 'Reinvention' is when the record truly starts, yearning guitars and well-placed vocal harmonies that goes along at a brewing pace into a chorus that refrains from completely exploding.In a similar fashion 'The Soldiers Mark' sees the band pouring their heart out openly, with the Larson brothers providing the most mesmerizing moments of the album; "Can someone please hit the pause button? Now I'm here".
From there are in their isn't much to shout about. Although 'Friends' has a charming hook of "That's why we call our friends on the weekend". Tracks like 'Red Lights' and 'Action' are more or less your standard indie-rock circa 2006, with the latter sounding slightly like a more calmer Early November.
The remainder is mostly mediocre and though the band show some good ideas, especially instrumentally, it isn't anything new and their influences at times can easily be heard. 'Mumbled' and 'Tricks' slowly and somewhat painfully bring the album to sleep, as the bands favouritism towards piano-based ballads, to an extent, spoils whatever promised potential the first half of the record showed.
I wanted to like Les Sages and I thought 'Share This' had promise but overall the poor tracks outweigh the better tracks. Therefore leaving a disappointing impression. If do like some of the bands mention in the opening of this review, then by no means give Les Sages; although I personally don't hear no hint of Brand New or Taking Back Sunday on here.
2.5/5
'Share This' by Les Sages is available now on Deep Elm.
Les Sages - Share This Preview by alterthepress
Les Sages on MySpace.
Sean Reid
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