Lab Partners

Seven Seas

Pravda

Street: 03.04

Lab Partners = Dirty on Purpose + Galaxie 500

Rock music should push you back or make your heart rate raise a beat or two. Sometimes it’s laid back, but even then, it’s still interesting. The generic album title and name of this band should tell you just how un-interesting they are. Lab Partners sound like a combination of many things you’ve heard done well before in the recent past of rock, but in the most straightforward way possible. Their vocals fade into the guitar noise just enough to mimic the slacker essence of shoegaze, but each lyric is still distinguishable, and their fuzz simply sounds polished. If you want to be noisy, then blow out my eardrums, or if you want to be messy, then let the fuzz run wild. Lab Partners try to combine a clean studio sound with the sound of a band that’s really given themselves to noise, but the album just flatlines for me. –Justin Gallegos