Rating:

(Eenie Meenie, 2006) Death In The Garden, Blood On The Flowers is indie rock quintet Irving’s second full length album, and its first release since 2003’s I Hope You’re Feeling Better Now EP. Over the last several years, post-punky art rock has made a comeback of sorts, and that seems to suit Irving just fine. Their 2002 debut fell somewhere between Elephant 6 indie pop and country-tinged psychedelia, but Death In The Garden finds the band playing a bit of new wave inspired indie rock. Well, for half of the album, anyway. Though released on CD, the album is split into “sides,” with side A consisting of the first six tracks, and the remaining seven reserved for side B. Side A could accurately be described as the post-punk/new wave side, while side B contains more traditional (for Irving, at least) indie pop. Splitting the album into halves seems to work relatively well here, because it allows for a mood to be set, and it would be jarring to bounce back and forth between Beulah-styled pop (”Situation”) and vintage Cure synths and sadness (”Jen, Nothing Matters To Me”). Irving still does indie pop well, as demonstrated by the catchy riffs and melodies of “Situation” and “I Want To Love You In My Room,” and they can competently craft post-punk, like the creepy “The Gentle Preservation Of Children’s Minds” and the impassioned “I’ll Write The Song, You Sing For Me,” but Death In The Garden, Blood On The Flowers is a bit spotty. There are no genuinely bad songs (although “The Look Of Flowers That Are Looked At” is a bit boring), but the songs that aren’t excellent are pretty mediocre, and can make it difficult to really get into the album. If Irving could just keep it together for a whole album, they could make a really great record, but this isn’t it.

* 1. The Gentle Preservation Of Children’s Minds

  2. She’s Not Shy

  3. Jen, Nothing Matters To Me

* 4. Death In The Garden, Blood On The Flowers

* 5. I’ll Write The Song, You Sing For Me

  6. The Longest Day In The Afternoon

* 7. Situation

* 8. I Want To Love You In My Room

* 9. Care, I Don’t Care

 10. If You Say Jump, I Will Say No

 11. Lovely, Just Like Her

 12. Hard To Breathe

 13. The Look Of Flowers That Are Looked At

* = recommended tracks

Buy album

– Kevin

This 3-beetsreview was posted on May 18th, 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.