There are records that remind you of a specific time. Music holds memory as well as any other sensory input, and there are records that remind you of other records -- bands that remind you of other bands. Overseas' self-titled release does just that. In the midst of listening to “Mare Nostrum” (“Our Sea” for those deficient in a Latin education or a dictionary), I found myself recalling the guitar tones of Red Sparowes and a tiny bit of Fugazi. Explosions In the Sky even crept into the dreamscape a bit from time to time.

This release, from a Washington, Pennsylvania band, is slightly pedestrian in the sense that I can’t really get a feel for a sound that is truly theirs. I hear the previously noted guitar sounds and styles of the Sparowes, Fugazi, and maybe even the Grails, but not a tone that they seem to own. Nor do they own a structural style their own. They cavort through mellow-to-thrashing tempos, which immediately refer to These Arms Are Snakes, but seem to lose a distinctive sound of their own in the mix of it all “Your Star” has an interesting mix of drum machine programming with live drums that reminds me of any number of Radiohead tracks from the last few albums and then slips down into a pocket groove of organic drums and slow, methodical riffs.

Through and through, the entire album remains interesting, track for track, but fails to grip the listener by the balls. I can only hope that this release is a precursor to a distinctive sound that they will discover for themselves, as I believe that any band worth their weight should be able to surpass simply displaying their influences and similar styles to becoming something of a force of their own. And I certainly hear a drive to find that force of their own sound; to express what is genuinely theirs and not just to reiterate what has come before or what they have heard and loved. There is nothing wrong with parading your influences and commonalities. It just has to do with how you reconstruct them in your own vocabulary and style.  

-Gabriel Bogart