King Night
Album | Salem
Much-hyped blog favorites don't quite deliver.
As a band, Salem is a pretty irresistible concept: three seemingly very troubled oddballs from Chicago, obsessed with dirty hip-hop and making music that sounds as if it was created to be played at a rave located within a haunted house. The band’s much-anticipated full-length mostly delivers on the promise of their early singles (many of which are included), but it fails to ignite the imagination in the way one might hope. The songs are suitably mysterious, but too often the production just sounds tinny and weird, like cheap keyboards played way too loud through blown out amps -- and not in a good way! The best tracks here (“Redlights,” “Frost”) manage to sound sonically dissonant and weirdly calm at the same time, while “Trapdoor” and “Tair” finally answer the question of what goth hip-hop would actually sound like. All the spooky visuals and blog hype aside, Salem really are in possession of an interesting and unusual vision. Hopefully next time they’ll be able to push it just a little bit further.
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