Wackiness.org Reviews Archive § Music

As the album begins, I'm reminded of Alanis Morissette, or Sarah McLachlan, or some such "adult alternative rock/pop" artist. This first impression fades out of truth as the album progresses, though still holds vaguely true in the subtly pained tone of Stefanie Doortin's wonderfully soothing vocals throughout. While listening to Such Is the Way of Things, the first EP release by the band of well rounded music experience known as Consafos, I notice myself recalling tunes by Neil Young of my youth. This folk-rock basis holds strong through most all of the album, only vaguely variating into something more standard of the alternative rock stylings mentioned above. They take a more subtle approach to the rock portion of it all, though, keeping a really low-toned melodious lull, ambiently swimming in a sea of harmonicas, soft guitar patterns, and simply calm drum-lines.

Lyrically speaking, the album isn't anything special. Luckily Doortin knows how to put what's missing in the lyrics into her most prevalent instrument: Her voice. Even when she sings "I want to carve our names into a tree so deep that it will bleed and the blood would flow over everything coving it with our love" in the beginning of "The Lonely Ones," I feel as though I actually care. Lyrics aside, the Way of Things has enough interesting rhythms to keep me entertained, if only minimally. The slow gallivanting pace follows this album to the end, even into the hidden track, with the occasional jump in energy, which in the end makes me either very tired or very lost. "It's War (Mama)" starts out with a minute and a half of nearly pure harmonica, so slow I usually forget about it until the song starts into its strong beat and semi-distorted electric guitar versing. "One More Drink" continues with this theme, starting out with a much more entertaining harmonica intro and slowly crescendos into the still fairly unnoticeable, but more up-beat song itself. "Billy's Porch," "The Lonely Ones" and "Heart of Stone" are more on the down-beat side, but still pretty much the same thing with less harmonicas and more pianos and violins.

Over the thirty-three minute play-time (including a five minute pause for the hidden track), Such Is the Way of Things pops in and out of consciousness, and even after having listened to it an ungodly amount of times for this review I still hardly recall any of it. If you need a good relaxing half-hour, or some decent background music, you might want to check this album out. If you can pay attention long enough, it does bring about a glow of quality, with some fairly compelling and entertaining riffs, rhythms and beats, but it's honestly quite hard to do.

Rating

62/100

Reviewer

Zeff Svoboda

Published

March 04, 2004