Pomegranates Everybody, Come Outside!

I guess it takes some cojones to name your band after a second-class fruit, and then to leave off the ‘The’, but I’m not holding it against Pomegranates, or for that matter, pomegranates. They (the band) are unashamed and come out swinging on their second disc on the Lujo label, looking to make their mark in a kind of Clap Your Hands, Vampire Weekend-ish kind of way. This means that the tinkling guitars are prominent and the mood is celebratory though not a little bit experimental. Like those other, more hyped bands, Pomegranates puts forward some strong material, and a keen sense of melody makes this something more than a simple rehash of tried and true ideas. Dynamics are important too, and this band is adept at managing the highs and lows. A representative track might be Corriander (spices now?!), since it has all the elements; the Soweto via The Edge guitar riff, a respectable tune and a middle section that pulls back and builds some tension. 384 BC acts as a further rumination on Corriander’s harmonic material, with a hushed atmosphere that somehow manages to not come off as indulgent. The same can’t be said for Jerusalem Has a Bad Day, which is needlessly stretched out to almost 7 minutes, and especially I Feel Like I’m a Million Years Old, which would have been poignant at 2 minutes, but is almost unforgiveable at 13. I give them credit though for sticking it at the end of the disc, like Wilco’s Reservations, so as not to interrupt the flow of the album. And it’s proof that this band is still thinking in “album as document” terms, in these heady days of the iPod shuffle (ok, someone needs to write a song called The iPod Shuffle. Here, I’ll get you started: