Tanner Horn, if you couldn’t tell from his band’s
preposterously awkward moniker, is trying too hard.
Horn pushes his voice to careen and curl into impossible
reaches and as a result his band comes out sounding
a bit like Buckcherry ripping off DNA and the Cramps.
The group’s eponymous EP sounds like a decent
band chained to the ground and subsequently dragged
deeper still by an unsure frontman. “Panico” with
its jagged guitar monotony and triumphant swagger reaches
back to post-punk cool, but is ultimately derailed
by the combination of dorky robot chick vocal snippets
and clueless “We do it on the radio” callouts.
Horn cops a little Isaac Brock-style squawk, but for
the most part his vocals sound naturally jittery and
tense.
The rest of the six-song disc finds Horn trying on
different vocal quirks on each track, hopping from
Brock to Neil Haggerty to Craig Finn to honky tonk
howls and finally settling into the ghastly, miscalculated
faux-accent and forced cadences of acoustic dirge “For
The Ladies.”
But there is definitely hope for this group, if Horn
can settle into his natural voice. “Crazy Days” (almost
instantly skip-able due to a truly irritating acapella
intro) breaks into a beautifully executed bridge replete
with Ratatat-sounding ephemeral guitars lifting the
track into a truly heart-pounding climax. “My
Perverted Mind” finds the band comfortable dispensing
indie rock in a classic mode and Horn’s voice
seems less strained then on other cuts, especially
when the song diverges into cut-up punk stuttering.
And when Horn talks about showing off his “perverted
mind,” you can’t help but wishing he had
actually taken his own advice and stuck within this
certain persona before letting himself zip about to
a dozen other voices.
Favorite Track: “My Perverted Mind”
