Short and Dull

Pride, the new album from California band Sperø (the inclusion of the letter ø seems like a non-sensical gimmick, seeing as none of the members appear to be Scandinavian and their sound is distinctly American), is, simply put, not very good. The album’s best feature is perhaps its brevity – with only six songs, each clocking in between the 2-6 minute mark. The vocal duties are split between guitarist Jesse Hofstee and keyboardist Hillary Laughery. While both of them have perfectly fine voices, they lack the grit and soul required to pull off the blues rock sound they’re going for. In order to compensate, they rely too heavily on vocal bends, microphone effects, and at times it sounds like they’re faking southern drawls (on the title track specifically).

But enough about the singers – they’re not the real problem here. The real issue with this album is that it sounds so amateurish. The song writing is unimaginative, if not downright lazy. The band often finds a riff that sounds “bluesy”, repeats it for the duration of the song, and throws in an obvious chorus with some minor thirds over major chords. On the track “Better Man”, the band missed an opportunity to change things up with a ballad. Instead of a heartfelt or interesting song, we get a sparse, repeated melody and guitar riff. Neither the riff nor Laughery’s voice are good enough to carry the song for a full six and a half minutes. It gets boring very quickly, and it stays that way.

Each song has a pretty glaring miscue on it. The echo track towards the end of opener “Can’t Get More” comes out of nowhere and is entirely incongruent with the rest of the song (not to mention it sounds like a cheap garageband effect). When it comes down to it, much of the production sounds as if it was done by beginners on cheap software. On “Friend”, a duet, Hofstee’s voice comes prominently through the left channel, while Laughery’s voice languishes weirdly in the center of the mix, a bit too recessed and a bit too soft – it sounds like an afterthought.

The music, however boring and underproduced it is, is rarely offensive (except for the bad, loud guitar track on “Talking Up”). Sperø would sound fine doing a live set at a dive bar, but when every song sounds the same, and every song is bad, it’s tough to sustain anyone’s interest for the length of an album, even when that album is a mere six songs.