Audio Out Send ...Or Does It Explode?

It's 8 am and your head is a condemned building feeling the first kiss of a wrecking ball. You look outside, and the gray Sunday sky is a thick, foreboding dome above a mundane city of brick and asphalt. Maybe it's already raining. You go to get a handful of aspirin and a large glass of water, your nervous stomach clenching like a fist, tighter with each step to the kitchen. You should not have had that final drink last night. It would probably have been wise to skip the one before that too. You return to bed, close your slightly swollen eyes, listen to the soft splatter of rain in the alley outside your window. Perhaps you want a nice record to see you through your pain as you await the embrace of sleep. So you put on the latest album from Audio Out Send on your stereo, press play, and awkwardly lay back, pull up the covers, and try your damnedest not to throw up.

It seems the boys in the Audio Out Send know exactly how you feel. Every song is gentle and intricately arranged; most are mellow, mid-tempo numbers lightly adorned with forthright keyboards and winding electric guitar. Your head sways gracefully as album opener Imagining Things tenderly winds its way out of your speakers. The Great Lawn Competition does even more to melt your pain away. After the graceful arpeggios of Rolling Heads ends, you think you've found a hangover remedy far better than those sticky red drinks they hawk late at night on Channel 12. You gulp down the last of your water and begin to drift unsteadily back to sleep - but against all rational thought, part of you desperately wants to stay awake long enough to hear the album to its completion. When the curiously spelled Steereo ends, it is no longer a question. Maybe it's merely the conceit of being at the right place at the right time, but you immediately feel some kind of deep, inner connection with Audio Out Send. Their whispery vocals placed over peacefully strummed guitar and tranquil drumming reminds you of the quieter moments of Elliott Smith or The American Analog Set. Maybe it's the ghosts of last night's drinking still playing with you hazy thought processes, but you become increasingly convinced that there exists a good chance you will love this band. That you will, as is your habit sometimes, wake up from your groggy state in a few hours and call your more musically inclined friends with news of the new band you've discovered, how they seem to hit all the right notes while playing to the usual muses of love, loss and loneliness. You've got it all planned out. You will visit the band's website when you reawaken, when you can enjoy it better. Maybe you'll search for their unreleased or live tracks on Kazaa. You will diligently inspect their tour dates for your hometown.

And then Call For First Times comes on. You get the feeling you've heard this before. It's a little rowdier than the previous tracks, with a driving backbeat and the distortion finally turned high on the guitars. But, even so, as each successive track comes forward, almost indistinguishable from the last, your enthusiasm wanes. Your hope begins to fade until it is just a mere shadow of its former self. This will not be love. No phone calls will be made. In fact, you will struggle to stick with the remainder of the album. In a way you are glad; oftentimes you fall too quickly in love with bands, ending up at the record store up the street purchasing records you'll soon regret. But you feel a little cheated; something that starts so good, where each note bursts with the false promise of limitless potential is in many ways more of an overall disappointment than an album that wavers unevenly between genius and tedium.

But, on the other hand, perhaps resequencing the album would destroy the early magic of Or Does It Explode? Perhaps the notable songs would be lost like the rest in unyielding waves of monotony. All you know is that after the first half, you were ready to consecrate the band. Now you'll merely look forward to their new album with cautious optimism. Audio Out Send could really be on to something here. Or they could have committed one of the most dissatisfying musical sins, peaking on their first song on their debut album.