Music For Your Next Quarter-Bounce Party
Music Concrete (Sundried Records)
The Prophets
In the promotional materials for Music Concrete, Jeffrey Lee Puckett of the Courier-Journal, calls Louisville’s Prophets “music for smart people who drink too much.” I will agree that Music Concrete, the sophomore release from The Prophets, is drinking music, especially for this town. This is garage rock, pure and simple: raw, unsophisticated guitar/bass/drums that switch between touches of alt-country and the sort of all-out rawk-n-roll Louisvillians love to down shots by.
Lyrically, the band is a conundrum. Shards of thoughts and half-formed images whiz by at a dizzying rate. When you finally puzzle out one complete idea, the band has long since left you and is well into another enigmatic phrase. Occasionally I found myself wondering if the band was truly trying to bring about its points in an artful, poetic way or just trying to prove themselves wiser than their listeners.
While Music Concrete will no doubt be a popular, well-received disc in this town (and the band deserves kudos for tapping into the current modern-rock scene with a well-produced, nicely created product), it seems to be painting itself into a corner with a sound that is a little too one-dimensional. When you break the music down, its elements are simplistic. While turning up the distortion on the guitars and growling out a haunting vocal imitation of Creed’s Scott Stapp – no doubt confirming this band’s status as one of Louisville’s most popular acts – it leaves one wondering what the band will do for an encore. After all, even the smartest people among us eventually have to sober up.