Arms - Kids Aflame
Arms is one of three musical outlets that 26-year old musician Todd Goldstein is part of. This debut release, inspired by his love of sad and weird music took a three year period to come about as this one man band writes all his own material; this is some of his most idiosyncratic material and plays the majority of instruments himself. After moving to Brooklyn with the ambition and creative awareness of making music, with this album he has produced some raw, intimate and quite frankly dreary tunes in fuzzy, echo-laden production.
To open the album with the wonderful ‘Sabretooth Typist’ was an amazing idea. The track may be less than a minute long, but this gives a listener a sense of solidarity with a quick sharp impulse of running water and chanting. Have you ever listened to a CD where its entire purpose is to relax, running water, animal sounds, that type of thing. Well this is like that, it’s just a shame the rest of the CD isn’t as effective.
The music on this CD is strange, completely out of place and takes no consideration to the surrounding elements. ‘Whirring’ is the lead single and even this is a stand back track where you want to listen from a distance for fear that getting too close may blast you from the speakers. The guitars keep a beat while the drums insistently crash out of tune. Other lively tracks include the noise drenched ‘The Frozen Lake’, the brassy pop ‘Pocket’ and the Smiths influenced ‘John the Escalator’ which loses all hope towards the end.
On the acoustic side, the mellow ‘Construction’ is dreary, has repetitive ping pings and tap taps. The last thirty seconds really speed up, but it is just a shame rest of track isn’t the same. The title track with a ukulele sounds completely flat and unexciting, ‘Eyeball’ with a various string section gets wobbly at times and the most dullest track I have ever had to endure, ‘Fall’ has absolutely nothing going for it.
The melodramatic, crooned and quite boring vocals are always uninteresting and barely change pitch. On ‘Tiger Tamer’ the vocals are drowned in sound from the instruments and a chanting section seems completely out of place, the country infected ‘Sad, Sad, Sad’ has some distant harmonies and ‘Ana M’ has a female vocal contribution.
Possibly the only decent and well worth listening track to be found on ‘Kids Aflame’ was ‘Shitty Little Disco’ with is soaring and jumpy riff beginning that grabs your attention. As for the rest of the album, with all the chanting, dreary sounds and melodies, you could say that this album may be dedicated for the local cults.