We Only Said We Only Said

College students are strange. We go find quite places to study, and then once we get there we waste no time in throwing on our headphones and filling our space with noise once again. The music that gets thrown on is designated “homework music.” Plenty of people have taken Explosions in the Sky (I go to a bit of a hippy school and they’ve become the new stoner favorite) or Mogwai (less prevalent because it doesn’t sound as good on acid) and relegated them to this position. I can’t do it with Mogwai because I like them too much and it distracts me. I can’t do it with Explosions because I don’t like feeling like a douchebag who long boards to class with it blaring in his earbuds and says “it’s really chill, dude.”

We Only Said’s debut album is perfect for this. I like it enough to actually play it, but it’s bland enough that it’s never going to distract me.  I could easily sit back and listen to it for five minutes and take a break or I could completely tune it out and work.

Instrumental rock bands are everywhere. We Only Said get the job done, but they do almost nothing to distinguish themselves from the legions of post-rock acolytes looking for indie cred. They make very passable music that’s rarely interesting. They occasionally make notable use of piano, especially on Go Rotten, Your Drab Eyes and That Evening We Were Alone Together. Their off-kilter piano lines mesh well with the vocals, which are used as an extra melodic instrument when necessary. It all sounds very standard and completely effortless. There are clear attempts to build tension, but it almost never works and the songs rarely go anywhere. The album treads water from start to finish.

We Only Said is passable and fairly boring. It makes great background music for late night drives or studying, but it’s not very interesting or engaging. It’s in minor keys and is mildly tense, making it a great candidate for a CSI episode. Maybe the band can play a murdered musical troupe killed by a crazed vaudevillian, and when he’s finally caught and the killing stops, he’ll be escorted out of the station while Go Rotten plays sadly in the background while Grissom quips"I guess he's played his last tune."