Video of the Day and Review: Rogue Wave, “Good Morning (The Future)”
A couple enjoys love among the ruins in this first video from “Permalight.” The video looks like it was shot at the Salton Sea in California — if you ever need a location for your speculative fiction apocalypse movie, go there.
Rogue Wave, “Permalight” (Brushfire)
Rating: 74
Rogue Wave’s “Permalight” corrects the course Zack Rogue set with the band’s third album, 2007′s “Asleep at Heaven’s Gate,” a collection of self-serious stadium rock that threatened to consign this promising band to the crowded ranks of Coldplay-mates. Rogue chose to fight a series of setbacks with beautifully bright melodies and arrangements that add an electro sheen to the modern campfire mood that Rogue Wave established with “Out of the Shadow” in 2004.
The positive, shimmering mood is set with the New Order-style rhythms of “Good Morning” and the electro-acoustic reverie of the title song, which builds to an exhilarating dance-rock finish. But Rogue has not been fully seduced by pulsing beats. Not much separates “Fear Itself” from the gentle folk of early songs such as “Be Kind — Remind,” and “We Will Make a Song Destroy” proves there is still power behind Rogue Wave’s power-pop.
But “Permalight” does not make for an easy front-to-back listening experience; it plays like the many moods of its creator, jumping from one musical fascination to the next with little continuity. In some respects, this is admirable, because Rogue Wave is constantly surprising on “Permalight”: Its penultimate track, “You Have Boarded,” is a positively buoyant piece of modified Merseybeat, completely unexpected. Rogue Wave might just be deciding what kind of band it wants to be next time, and with “Permalight,” it has laid out multiple options.
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