The High Strung Get The Guests by: Joseph Coscarelli Mon:16-Jul-07 Label: Park The Van Year: 2007 WB rating 27 out of 100

Problem is, you've heard this all before. A band with a familiar sound comes to a certain precipice, whether it be on their debut or four albums into their career, where a long fall to mediocrity is only one slip away. But more often than not, the slip isn't even required. Instead, the band – maybe once on sure footing and comfortable in its close associations with other acts – stands by too idly as the ground under them, their foundation, crumbles beneath their feet. To become too comfortable in a style frequently tread is all but a death-wish; instead of garnering emotion from a listener, the sounds hardly elicit a stir and rather than ambition, we hear apathy. And it stings all the more sharply, -- no, rather, the dull ache intensifies -- when it's easy to assume that apathetic re-treading was far from the band's modus operandi. Instead, by walking again the beaten path, one may cross the dangerous distinction between a warm, inviting reverence to influence and flat out bringing nothing new to the table.  

The High Strung are a product of the 1990s garage rock explosion/revival in Detroit, Michigan that spawned such almost-"It" bands as The Mooney Suzuki, The Detroit Cobras, and The Von Bondies, all riding subsequent waves from the boat-rocking done by a certain candy-cane twosome. Lacking the Jack White X-factor each of these groups failed to accelerate out of the Motor City, but short of sustained obscurity, The High Strung distance themselves from their immediate peers stylistically. Where The White Stripes and their disciples' garages were grimy, dark and ragged, The High Strung's garage must've been well-lit with a breeze, as a generally light mood permeates. 'The Big Three Killed My Baby,' this is not, trading guitar-pop for dirty blues. On Get The Guests, The High Strung take their cues from 'enter-guitar-based-indie-rock-band-here'. A lineage expanding from The Kinks through Big Star, Built to Spill and Grandaddy is explored with heat-seeking accuracy, too on point to warrant preference over forefathers or even peers.  

At 17 tracks, Get The Guests is a modern-day epic of Sufjan proportions, but with each track failing to stand out against the next, resulting in a damningly long exercise in maintaining middle-of-the-road status. Sounding flat and uninspired the production leaves something to be desired; everything from the guitar tone through the percussion and to the vocals is sterile, lacking any idiosyncrasy and the quirk of a band like Beulah, which the forgettable horn-line on album opener 'What A Meddler' hints at. Even grating in his higher register, lead singer Josh Malerman is able enough but possesses little remarkable nuance – certainly not enough front-man pizzaz to anchor an otherwise standard-issue three piece. 'So Dry' is exactly that as even the added texture in the form of vocal harmony sounds tired. 'Rimbaud / Rambo' boasts a clever title line but little else as the lazy and awkward rhyme of "pass" with "ass" does its part to ruin the chorus' clever wordplay. The obvious rhyme is a common ailment, recalling the Rivers Cuomo of late, each song having at least one to call its own. Off-beat lyrics about "rent-a-cops" in 'The Curator' hint at a world outside that pesky box but simple and repetitive song structures leave The High Strung grounded; each 3-minute nugget leaves a listener begging for a frill or two.  

Such little variation and hardly even a switch in tempo allows each song to bleed into the next, rendering an album's "flow" useless when tracks change without notice. It is possible to champion accessibility and organics without resorting to painting by numbers, but unfortunately, short of a breezy positivity, The High Strung miss the electricity with which bands like The White Stripes forge new ground with bare-bones and old tricks. Instantly forgettable, the songs become teflon, resisting sticking like an effective garage rock number and leaving us hard-pressed to distinguish between 'Arrow' and 'Grave Digger', track one or track 17. I know, I know – keep it simple, stupid – but please, try and keep me awake.