The Dreadful Yawns Rest by: Steve Scully Mon:29-Oct-07 Label: Exit Stencil Year: 2007 WB rating 63 out of 100

For the moment at least, country music is the new black in the indie scene. Fuelled in recent times by Johnny Cash himself – through duets with the indie luminaries such as Nick Cave and Fiona Apple – the love affair between traditional country and western music and the ever-widening alt-rock genre is persistent. The progeny of this union includes acts ranging from the pop-tinged Counting Crows to such respected names as Bright Eyes, Augie March and Wilco. But the pop/country crossover isn’t a modern invention; see the brilliance of Neil Young. The Dreadful Yawns are another to cite Young as an influence, and another attempting to bring country-fuelled melancholy to the masses.

The album takes on many guises through its course: there’s the slightly off-beat ‘You’ve Been Recorded’, the McCartney-esque ‘Changing States’, the epic ‘Candles’ (complete with a sing-along, ‘Hey Jude’ section). Languor, however, is the one constant.

Ben Gimetro’s often shaky vocal presence sets the tone for this fatigue-inducing listen, and the lack of stark dynamic twists or unexpected turns doesn’t help The Dreadful Yawns in their quest to sound anything other than mediocre. Only on the odd occasion – the harmonised guitar solo in ‘You’ve Been Recorded’, the catchy riff, slide guitar and group sing-along in ‘Candles’ – does the band add enough of a quirk, enough of an original thought, to break through the monotony. ‘Candles’ is a beautifully rendered piece (despite being overlong) and is Rest’s centrepiece both creatively and sonically.

The Dreadful Yawns sometimes have more in common with psychedelic rock than the straight-forward organicism of country. The Wayne Coyne-type vocals in ‘You’ve Been Recorded’ and the synth and string-laced oddity ‘We Go Up’ stand as stark examples of their willingness to depart from tried-and-true methods. ‘Being Used To You’ has the male-female vocal harmonies and banjo of a country tune, but evokes a madness more akin to the drug-addled Meat Puppets’ take on the genre, the vocals just that little bit off-key, the harmonies rather ad hoc in nature.

Perhaps the most infuriating moment on Rest, the one moment that evokes some emotion out of the grey area in intensity, is the incredibly ineffective, derivative ‘November Nights’. Sounding like The Eagles’ more indulgent moments, it moves at a snail’s pace, guitar’s over-slid, lyrics over-angsted: “You think you’ve been taken for granted/You’re probably right.”

You could read so much into the name, The Dreadful Yawns: a fear of drowsiness, a hatred of fatigue; or have too many people labelled them a 'dreadful yawn’ that they chose to adopt it? Rest may wander along at no groundbreaking pace, and might at no point set your world alight, but The Dreadful Yawns live in another time and space where this is wholly suitable. Like Grandaddy before them, they seem at home in these little pastoral ditties (the album’s final track, ‘End of Summer’, would seem at home on the Under the Western Freeway), these quiet melodies with understated sonic breadth that evoke a quiet contentedness rather than any overwhelmingly strong sensations.

Pleasant, with nothing overly off-putting about them, The Dreadful Yawns are most definitely capable of making some lovely sounds and constructing some effective pop melodies. Rest, however, never really takes off and may be destined for relegation to the background music category.