Andrew Weathers, the man behind Full Spectrum, has a band band that he sometimes plays in,
the wink-and-noddy and 100 percent accurately titled Real Life Rock & Roll
Band. In this modern time of vast oversharing, there’s nothing weird about the
band’s name, nothing at all. In fact, the tongue-in-cheekness is somewhat
fitting, as, although this band is indeed a “rock” band by definition, its take
on “rock” is breezy and somewhat unassuming, a Sea and Cakey tributary of clean
action but with sometimes Autotuned vocals, a device that works surprisingly
well here. Like the best of the self-aware indie set of the late 1990s and
early 2000s, RLR&RB wear their influences on the fronts of their ironic
t-shirts, turning in their take on “original hippie cowboy” Mickey Newbury’s
“Let Me Sleep” on the A-side of the cassingle (why not?) while knocking out
their own concoction, “Death Is a Narrow Sea” on the flip. Each track is an
endlessly relistenable slice of mopey post-pop joy, and the band even veers
into Juno territory by the end of “Death Is a Narrow Sea” with its dissonant
guitars and melancholy chords. Turns out Weathers is a bit of a mid-oughts emo
fan, and clearly he’s spun a little Sunny Day and Juno in his time. He’s
certainly got the non-dickish emo stuff down (as opposed to what I consider the
“dickish” emo, like the stuff that my brother listened to in middle school).
Don’t listen to dickish emo. Listen to the Real Life Rock & Roll Band. With
a name like that, they’ve got to be legit.
--Ryan Masteller
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