The Pineapple Thief: Someone Here Is Missing

The Pineapple Thief
Someone Here Is Missing
Kscope
2010-06-15

The Pineapple Thief’s latest release, Someone Here Is Missing, adds electronic gurgles and screeches, as well as conventional keyboard sounds, to their previously established heavy guitar rock palette. Sometimes this works, as on the opener, “Nothing at Best,” which is a jittery construct of distorted guitar hooks and off-kilter Jesus Jones-type samples, or on “Show a Little Love,” which manages to combine bumming lyrics with guitar lines that invite rocking out. “Wake Up the Dead,” sounds like the best Radiohead song you’ve never heard, from Bruce Soord’s quavering Thom Yorke impersonation right down to the jumpy bed of underlying electronica. These songs encompass what’s best and worst about this record: the stuttering mope-thrash is lively enough, if a little repetitive in the second half, but there are too many moments that invite listeners to think, “Hey, what does this remind me of?” The band relies on the quiet-LOUD-quiet dynamic a bit too much as well, but with two mini-epics topping seven and a half minutes, nobody can say these guys lack ambition.

RATING 6 / 10
FROM THE POPMATTERS ARCHIVES