{"id":24964,"date":"2014-02-03T11:53:03","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T11:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/album-review-the-bank-trail-and-lake-michigan\/"},"modified":"2018-03-17T15:33:23","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T15:33:23","slug":"album-review-the-bank-trail-and-lake-michigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/album-review-the-bank-trail-and-lake-michigan\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Bank Trail and Lake Michigan – Split EP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image\"Do you prefer a whisper to a wail? Do you like to feel like you\u2019re privy to the most intimate of confessions? Do you partake in the adherence to the lo-fi production made mainstream-friendly by Bon Iver? Committing to checking all of these boxes, Essex\u2019s The Bank Trail<\/strong> (the work of one Ash Price) and Yorkshire\u2019s geographically confused Lake Michigan<\/strong> (that one of one Chris Marks) unite their forces in a split EP for which they each contribute two original tracks and a cover. Brace yourselves for considerable languor, and a nagging feeling that all this would seamlessly fit a quirky Sundance movie.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, The Bank Trail<\/strong> distinguishes himself from his colleague with the eschewing of the horrid fuzz\/grain of poor recording equipment. While it might feature as an integral part Lake Michigan<\/strong>\u2019s style, it would only hinder the reverberating clarity of the former\u2019s guitar. \u2018Absent\u2019<\/em> and \u2018Wildcard\u2019<\/em> are both repetitive cycles of soft arpeggios, the former cutting through stretching background atmospherics and the latter through silence. The echoing reverb employed to ghostify Price\u2019s voice might be said to step into overkill territory, but it\u2019s perhaps the only thing keeping the man\u2019s soft-spoken tones to feel anything other than banal. Those issues are still present on his cover of Nirvana\u2019s \u2018Pennyroyal Tea\u2019<\/em> but the combination of guitar and piano actually does elevate it somewhat (in addition to something resembling chord progression).<\/p>\n

Split by The Bank Trail & Lake Michigan<\/a><\/p>\n

On the other side, Lake Michigan<\/strong> makes up for that downright hair-raising (and, worse still, erratic) grain by way of lovely guitar work. Like the soothing back and forth of gentle waves, Marks\u2019 picking has a genre, ghostly, and almost fluid quality. The DIY texture of it all might convince some, but the drab vocal tones on display here surely can\u2019t be all the, quite obviously, talented musican can deliver (you can hear him struggle at times to hit some of the graver notes\u2026 something that would\u2019ve been corrected by transposing everything up a key or two). \u2018Mid\u2019<\/em> takes the same route, albeit with a little more atmospherics. On his cover of Desire\u2019s \u2018Under Your Spell\u2019<\/em>, made famous by the best 2011 film about Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver, Marks slows and tones it down (vocally, he struggles yet again early on). I\u2019d hate to imagine the comments section if this had been uploaded by some Youtube dude\u2026<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing inherently bad about the lo-fi aesthetic, but musicians seem to sometimes mistake DIY for a free pass in quality. Its best examples might sound like they\u2019ve concocted their tracks, having barely woken up, on a broken 8-track, but in fact its \u201cmessiness\u201d is the result of utmost precision. It\u2019s almost cynical in a way, but it\u2019s eminently better than actually being messy. This is actually messy and, because the two contributors quite clearly do have some quality amidst the rubble, I wish it weren\u2019t. It\u2019s a free download though, so as Karl Marx one said \u2018you get what you pay for\u2019*. <\/p>\n

* he didn\u2019t<\/p>\n

1.5\/5<\/p>\n

\u2019Split\u2019<\/em> by The Bank Trail <\/strong>and Lake Michigan<\/strong> is out now on Close To Home Records<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Bank Trail<\/strong> links: Facebook<\/a>|Bandcamp<\/a>|Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n

Lake Michigan<\/strong> links: Facebook<\/a>|Bandcamp<\/a><\/p>\n

Words by James Berclaz-Lewis (@swissbearclaw<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you prefer a whisper to a wail? Do you like to feel like you\u2019re privy to the most intimate of confessions? Do you partake in the adherence to the lo-fi production made mainstream-friendly by Bon Iver? Committing to checking all of these boxes, Essex\u2019s The Bank Trail (the work of one Ash Price) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,8181],"tags":[5879,1483,7555,10974],"class_list":["post-24964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-post","tag-album-reviews","tag-close-to-home-records","tag-lake-michigan","tag-the-bank-trail"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAlbum Review: The Bank Trail and Lake Michigan - Split EP - Already Heard Staging<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do you prefer a whisper to a wail? 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