A Lull – Confetti

Confetti All Over the Place

Hailing from the Windy City, the percussion based band A Lull started when Nigel Dennis and Todd Miller’s previous band broke up in 2008. Since then, the duo have collaborated with numerous friends and musicians to create their own unique sound. Now as an 8-piece band, they’ve finally released their debut Confetti, a booming, progressive piece with countless layers of sounds and influences.

It begins with the driving “Weapons of War,” a great introduction to the band’s style. It’s clear that percussion takes precedence in this song as the rest of the electronic bleeps and even the vocals build around the rapid beat. Like an industrial factory, the structure of Confetti plays like an assembly line building over its base. But the base is the drum line, and the extra parts are a wide variety of instruments.

The vocals of the album start to it become more apparent in songs like “Some Love” and “Spread it All Around,” but sometimes the incoherent reverb blends in with the rest of the song as if it were just another instrument. Most if not all the songs on the album seem to switch gears so much that it’s like they tried to implicate a jazz influence within electro-pop. Yet, instead of the remarkable flow that you get with jazz, Confetti seems muddled and sloppy.

To a degree, A Lull is comprised of very talented musicians. There’s just so much going on that it doesn’t amount to the potential they all possess. In retrospect, A Lull’s Confetti is an appropriate title. When it’s in motion, it’s bright and shiny pop with a lot going on. A the end of the day, however, it lies flat as one big mess.