The Avenues - Slow Moving

Fri 3rd Jun, 2005 in Music Reviews

If you’ve seen The Avenues live, you’ll probably be familiar with the songs on Slow Moving. They’re all fairly catchy, hook-laden affairs and they get stuck in your head all too easily.

While the band’s Debaser stablemates have been picking up ARIAs and touring the globe (the list of bands to hang out at Debaser Studios reads like a who’s-who of the Perth music industry) the Avenues have been hard at work back at home, building a solid repertoire of songs, most of which aren’t available on record.

The songs are great. They’re well-written and arranged and sound great live, but the real test with Slow Moving is whether the songs sound good on record.

The answer is yes and no. Of the four tracks on the EP, the first and last tracks sound great, but the two in the middle are both disappointing.

Title track and opener Slow Moving is the ideal radio single. It’s inoffensive and unadventurous, but it’s catchy and you could listen to it all day. Gold & Grey rocks much harder and sounds every bit as impressive on record as it does in concert.

Something Got Me Started and Hard to Listen aren’t nearly as good though, and these two demonstrate what happens when you get your mates to record and produce your stuff. Something Got Me Started sounds awful. It’s baffling, it really is. It’s a great song, but somewhere in the production process all the fun suddenly disappeared and the end result is much worse than just disappointing.

On the other hand, Hard to Listen is disappointing for all the right reasons. Hang on, is there such a thing? Let me explain. This is probably their best song. Andy Ave really gets a chance to show that Cain Ave isn’t the only singer in the band. The guitars get a real workout. The song peaks and dips at all the right moments. Why is it disappointing then? Easy. It sounds nowhere near as good as it does live.

Slow Moving is far from a poor release though, especially for a relatively new band. If only they weren’t such a good live band, I probably would’ve enjoyed this EP a lot more. There’s enough signs of potential here but if you had to choose, your money would be put to much better use if you spent it on an Avenues gig.