Forget Cassettes CD Review at OnlineRock

If the 90s taught us anything, it’s that we need bands like Forget Cassettes. In the midst of a scene in which raw garage sparseness is the most commonly tapped access to any presumed sense of “authenticity,” it’s refreshing to find a rock band whose relatively hi-fi polish fits like an Isotoner and blackens nails both of fingers and the would-be coffin of today’s icy approach to angst in rock music. What’s more, while angst is supposedly as inherent to alt-rock as love is to pop and bravado is to hip-hop, to get it right is still no small feat. Like a punch to the disaffected face of Jack White, Beth Cameron’s fiery, clenched-fist vocals and calculated guitar blitz catapults Salt straight through our detached commercial scenes with a dead-on earnestness not seen since Doc Martin’s stock was sent through the roof by the underground’s revolt against hair bands. Salt is a driven, hard-rockin’ affair whose deftness of songwriting, while always impressive, only narrowly averts mainstream accessibility with its flashes of exceptional inspiration amid songs too lengthy for mass media either way.

FC stretches the brooding Tool/Helmet spectrum in some surprising directions, such as in “Lonely Does It,” which hints at influences as varied as Slint and early Alice In Chains while recalling, just for a second, in an anomalous passage of vox harmonies, Genesis. Even the almost danceable weak point “My Maraschino” saves itself with a mid-song moment of deconstruction, and then slowing again towards the end of its sprawling seven minutes, as if to indicate that any so perky moment is inherently fleeting. FC’s Salt reminds us how bands like Tool and Helmet ever warranted their fifteen minutes, and how if there’s any space left in the dark heart of mainstream rock for actual emotional authenticity, Forget Cassettes deserves at least as much, if not a thousand times more.

Favorite: Track 1 “Venis On ”