Sleepless: Semaphore

Editorial

Release date: 3 January 2009 (Independent)
Here we go again: the world of rock in all its glory; a genre of music with near unlimited potential - which gets horribly squandered with surprising regularity - leading to what we might call an over-abundance of absolute rubbish; an industry of commercialism and soulless music. Indeed, you would be forgiven if you pushed Semaphore, an Adelaidian local band, into this dull and extremely uninteresting category, but as the album progresses the maturity and textural exploration of rock music becomes very important to the band, and you should not discount the album for its relatively weak beginning. Let it go and let it grow, allow yourself some forgiveness and become enthralled with Sleepless.

Semaphore is a self-produced work that attempts, it seems, to push the sub-genre of 'Aussie Rock' in a direction that it hasn't gone before. In this, it is not entirely successful, but that's okay, remember that we are being forgiving here. The band's cited inspiration does not seem to tie in entirely well with the actual output. Groups like The Shins or maybe Morrissey seem to have a bigger influence here, but that's based on the actual music produced rather than each member's personal influence.

The album has been produced by the band, which means that it has not been privy to well-trained ears, but also hasn't been produced in that horrible pop manner. Overall the production is quite good for a home effort, but there is some clipping in the bass frequencies, which causes some unpleasant harmonic distortion. However, that is the way of these things and a lot of people would not notice anyway. It's a good album, though some more care would have been nice.

Tracks:
1. Let Me Adore You
2. Grace
3. Bright Note
4. Let Me Out
5. Time Heals
6. It's Over
7. Tightrope
8. Dark

Vincent Giles, April 2009
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