Eulogies: Eulogies

It’s nice when something like this happens: on tour as a solo artist last year, Peter Walker and his backing band formed the kind of bond that had them reincarnated as a true band. On their self-titled debut, Eulogies expands its simple guitar/bass/drums arrangements with soft, ghostly effects. Kind of like “Exit Music (For A Film)”-era Radiohead. Mostly it’s not that obvious. If you’re familiar with Walker’s work, Eulogies isn’t too much of a departure — his confluent rock sound’s fairly MOR, but at least genuine. “Little Davie” is indicative of what’s best about Eulogies, easily influenced by classic rock idols but finding its own voice, a slow/sad meditation on the cut-throat nature of work tied up in profits and performance reviews. But over the course of the record, a compositional technique of beginning relatively mellow, swelling over the course of a song to a fuller, wall-of-sound climax is repeated enough times that it loses something of its power. Nevertheless, Eulogies is less often tedious than pleasant, Walker’s voice hovering between angst and something pop-smooth. It washes by with its easy and echoing guitars, and like that, is gone.