Dream Diary – You Are the Beat

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When you think of recent lo-fi/dream pop releases of the past few years, of the various names that come to mind, one of them is bound to be the sweet sounds of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. So what could be better than a band that sounds exactly like them, save some different members? Nothing right?  

Right off the bat, it’s easy to see the similarities between Dream Diary and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. On “Paper Flowers,” you have the same bright guitars, synthesizer hum, and breathy-whispered vocals. However, it’s missing the element that makes all the instruments and vocals connect seamlessly, and it comes off exactly like a cheap knockoff karaoke POBPAH song; even the pacing is akin to that of “Stay Alive.” Halfway through I wanted to know where Kip and Peggy were.  Everything that the band is doing in terms of their sound is right and euphonic; it doesn’t sound repulsive, it just feels wrong. The vocals fall flat and the melodic shoe-gaze pop rhythms just resound emptily with nothing to carry them.

A standout song, regardless of whether it sounds original or not is found in “Something Tells Her.” Tambourine shimmers and shakes it’s way around the track, and with the female vocal presence layering over the top of the male, the normal flatness is expelled. This makes for a twee tune that actually goes somewhere that feels right and I feel like if Dream Diary focused on making more tunes that sounded like this, they could have made this album so much better. A few tweaks here, a few changes there and they could have just made pop jams in their own way, avoiding the dreaded criticism of sounding too much like another group. Sorry Dream Diary.

Take it this way: when you want the horribly unhealthy neon orange macaroni and cheese from a box do you reach for the mediocre store brand? Hell no, you get Annie’s or even Kraft for that matter. In some instances name brand matters, and this is one of them. So as the last track of You Are the Beat, “Audrey of Spirits,” fades to its mediocre shoe-gaze ending, calmly scroll down your iTunes to P, and listen to the real version. If anything, this album made me hungry for upcoming release of POBPAH.

[audio:https://austintownhall.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Dream-Diary-Something-Tells-Her.mp3]

Download: Dream Diary – Something Tells Her [MP3]