reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Dearestazazel - Be Mine

This Atlanta band's bio highlights its eclectic makeup – the opera-trained singer, the shred-head guitarist, the drummer who killed a guy (?!). In the context of a primarily synth-driven dance-rock band, however, these disparate elements sometimes refuse to mesh, and the result can be the aural equivalent of a peanut butter-and-pickled beet pizza. When everything does lock in, as on the bouncy, retro “Bubbles and Nights,” pulsating, moody “Get On Board the Drug Train” and sweeping “Dead, All Dead,” the ambition, epic style and hooks overpower the forced and somewhat cheesy aspects of the band's sound. To often, though, it's the incongruent feel and goofy moments (like the bafflingly klezmer-esque moments of “All My Friends Are In Love With Satan,” and the mere presence of a tune called “She Sells Sex by the Seashore”) that define this debut. – Scott Harrell