CD Reviews

Braids | Native Speaker

Kanine Records (2011)

By RYAN STEWART | January 4, 2011

2.5 Stars

It’s too bad that so much attention is being paid to the debut from Montreal’s Braids. This doesn’t feel like our introduction to the band.

It’s more like the album we should all discover after they’ve broken through with their second or third long-player, when we’ll all be a lot more forgiving. Native Speaker is the work of a band who haven’t discovered their identity yet — almost everything that follows the reverb-heavy synth riff at the beginning of “Lemonade” is reminiscent of a quick spin through the past four Animal Collective albums, from the tribal percussion on “Same Mum” to the way Raphaelle Strandell-Preston yelps and screeches like a female Avey Tare on “Glass Deers.”

There are, of course, worse bands to emulate, and Braids do a solid job of it. “Lemonade,” which takes off like a gazelle running across the veldt, is a lot of fun, and “Plath Heart” finds them reining in their digital-jam-band tendencies to a point where they sound like a polished pop outfit. Let’s just wait until LP2 before getting too excited.

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Topics: CD Reviews , Montreal, Animal Collective, Avey Tare, More

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