by Radhika Takru.
I don't quite know what to make of Mesmer.
See, it's a bit tricky because apart from a few reviews and a woefully sparse MySpace I've been dependent on a five line 'bio' on the band's last.fm page for background information.
Said bio goes: 'Mesmer is in a state of constant transformation; balancing between harmony and noise, staggering from violent freak-outs to serene drone rock.'
Well, I wouldn't at any point describe anything on Ghosts of a Tennis Court as 'serene', but yes that's pretty much it. To call them 'versatile' is to understate a point. This doesn't mean, however, that the songs sound completely different from each other. Though they do. This doesn't even mean that there are sudden tempo and chord changes in the course of a track. Though there are. No, the versatility extends beyond such predictability because what Mesmer appear to be doing is taking a variety of musical styles and incorporating them in one song by playing them all simultaneously. So you have 80s Nintendo meeting 00s electropop poking through a layer of surf rock framed by a horn section and pierced by a characteristically post-punky vocal (at this point I throw in the Horrors comparison I used when talking about Spiral 25 earlier).
Despite it's cringingly clichéd name, Teenage Dreams is undoubtedly the highlight of the album. Once your ears accustom themselves to the initially grating 80s blips that subside to form the base of the track, the song settles down and starts sounding comfortingly familiar as it carries within its melody an undercurrent of cheesy 80s rock and the more manufactured grunge sounds of the mid-90s. The lyrics themselves are better avoided in this writer's humble (ok, not really) opinion. A conclusion about meeting in teenage dreams and being 'fucked up with their teenage dreams'. The profanity only really making an appearance in the last line making one wonder if it was perhaps thrown in as an afterthought to establish the band's hardcoreness and don't-give-a-damn-ness.
A disclaimer: I make no guarantees about lyrical accuracy. I have only my ears to trust and they interpret the opening of Some Disney Scene as 'you want to go out with your iPhone' which I am fairly certain is incorrect. I cannot hear it as anything else, though.
Actually, the album highlight might be the 9 minute opus that is Mr. Florida. I have mixed feelings about this track, though, which is why its not 'undoubtedly' the highlight. You see, with all it's progressiveness I am having a hard time deciding if it's an awesome track in its own right or more an extended jam session better suited for a live audience than a passive home listener.
An interesting album from this Finnish fivesome. 'Happy Hardcore' is the ambiguous adjective plastered on their bare MySpace. It's an accurate description.
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