Movies

Sometimes, it is hard to imagine how bands can be so wrong. Take the Movies — they really want to convince the world that they sound like the Cure, Beat Happening and Joy Division when they quite obviously don’t. Just because you sing miserable songs with monotone vocals, it doesn’t automatically let you join the ranks of some very good bands — you need better songs to do that. That doesn’t make In One Era Out The Other a terrible record, it just doesn’t possess enough personality to elevate it above average. And while the band excel at coming up with unique ways to describe their music ("teenage contemporary” and "soft punk”), their finest moments seem to borrow heavily from other people. For example, "Secretariat” might have a sing-along melody, but when you end up singing Pavement’s "Here” along to it, that’s a problem. As long as they focus on having the melody overcompensate for the singer’s shortcomings, the Movies appear to have some potential. But those other moments when the songs merge into each other and the true dirge-y quality of the album reveals itself, things aren’t quite so good. Maybe next time.