The Kissaway Trail The Kissaway Trail by: Justin Pearsall Sun:29-Apr-07 Label: Bella Union/Speak 'N Spell Year: 2007 WB rating 61 out of 100

The latest signing to the sterling Bella Union record label, The Kissaway Trail are a Denmark five-piece outfit that are beginning to hit the hype machine. If you haven’t heard about them yet, you soon will. Regular references for the band include The Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire, Sigur Ros and so-on. All of these references will also be name checked in this review, because essentially this part of the hype machine is correct; The Kissaway Trail borrow from some of the best bands going round.

But is this enough? Have The Kissaway Trail moulded these influences into something that is remotely original and entertaining? Or are they simply sound-a-likes, built for listeners desperate to find something to hear in between the leak of the next Arcade Fire and the Sigur Ros live album? Neither is the definitive answer. The album is simply full of questions.

Opening track ‘Forever Turned Out To Be Too Long’ is a segue into the more traditional songs on the album. Chock full of full-bodied ‘hey’ chants and a grandiose background that resembles ( )-era Sigur Ros and Funeral-age Arcade Fire, it is indicative of the lush production and the familiar sound that reigns over the album. These exact qualities are what could make The Kissaway Trail your new favourite band, or simply another in a long line of groups that try, in suckerfish style, to attach themselves onto current trends.

The standout song from the album is undoubtedly the first single, ‘Smother + Evil = Hurt’. While the title looks like something you would expect to see in a chatroom or an evangelical sermon, the song has far more emotion than its symbols suggest. The aforementioned grand instrumentation are immediately prevalent, the opening of the song driven by strings and marching rhythms which dissipate for the remainder of the vocally focused track. Musically, the credibility and hooks of the song are without question, and bar from a few sub standard lines the lyrics are worthy of the emotional weight inherent in such a title: “Our kisses were lost and always windy/We are history cause history made us”.

The band’s dual vocalists, Thomas L Fagerlund and Soren B Corneliussen, both contrast and compliment each others styles; allowing the songs a cohesive quality and diversity. ‘It’s Close Up, Far Away’ has a distinctive Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots ‘Did You Realize’ quality; the vocal line reflecting the clean, crisp delivery of Wayne Coyne. These similarities are more pronounced by the choice of lyrics: “Did you know/It’s nothing to look forward to”, which ring like a diluted version of The Lips' poetic: “Do you realise?/That the sun doesn’t go down/It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round”.

On ‘Sometimes I’m Always Black’ the band move into moodier territory, the song’s reverberated guitar, punctuated by the four-to-the-floor drum beat. The sound created by the band in this atmosphere has a slight resemblance to Hail To The Thief’s more guitar-heavy moments. Such a comparison is neither flat or unwarranted, as it is on the darker tracks, like ‘Sometimes I’m Always Black’, where the band are closest to breaking through with an unoriginal and defined sound.

However, these few moments of originality are outweighed by the majority of the album where the band sounds too similar to the aforementioned indie leaders. The typical claim that The Kissaway Trail will repeat the successes of Bella Union’s 2006 alumni, Midlake and The Howling Bells, may eventually ring true commercially (their sound is likely to draw many people in). But artistically, the band falls short of the originality of both the bar-fuelled rock of the Howling Bells and the experimental folk of Midlake.

So where does all this leave The Kissaway Trail and their debut, self-titled album? In two words: dangling precariously.

As a first effort The Kissaway Trail shows signs of great promise, the band’s sound and their talents justify a lot of the hype surrounding them. But all we have to judge the band on is this album, and on this album they struggle to fully reveal to their audience exactly who they are. With a little soul searching and a willingness to take a few more chances, The Kissaway Trail could be whoever they want.