OUTSMARTING SIMON “Silent, Sober and Sound”
Silent, Sober and Sound was re-released with little fanfare a few months ago on Triple Crown, amidst the label promoting many of its other stand-out releases this year. And who can blame them? Throwing a dart and trying to pin down OUTSMARTING SIMON is hard, though not impossible. At a basic abstraction, it’s fairly obvious that SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE is a solid influence on the band, with soft, leading vocals, and long, winding, guitar driven songs. With 13 songs pushing 61 minutes of music, calling “Silent, Sober and Sound” excessive is probably an understatement. But even with its less than radio-friendly set-up, musically, these guys are on to something enticing. Meticulously crafted, and full of melodic warmth, OUTSMARTING SIMON appear to be directing their own rock opera of sorts. With moods crashing, and tensions raised (especially on “Silenced by Cars,” and “…And so ends the drought”) and lowered, these guys expressly dispel the notion that a lengthly musical release inevitably becomes stale. Although, “Silent, Sober, and Sound” fails to contain the virulent teeth-nashing that FAIRWEATHER was able to drop into its music every now and then, I see a lot of similarities with OUTSMARTING SIMON, and the former’s final disc, “Lusitania” (though without the egregious static and superflous instrumental parts). Just when you think every young band in existence is aping one of the few genres of the moment, a band like OUTSMARTING SIMON pulls off the covers on a sound that’s forging its own path.
Triple Crown
