What Laura Says   

Thinks and Feels

Terpsikhore 

 
LISTEN on last.fm

The first album form Arizona’s What Laura Says, Thinks and Feels, is charming. It is enthusiastic.  It flings its arms open wide and embraces a wide variety of musical styles, including those not normally seen under the indie rock umbrella (showtunes and a cappella rear their heads on almost every song).  The album sounds like What Laura Says had a lot of fun making it; that they sat around with each other, laughed, joked, and stayed up way too late, coming up with a lot of ideas for what their music should sound like.
   
The result sounds a lot like a brainstorm; as if they came up with a list of artists and songs they really liked and pieced together an album from those moments that they loved best.  Unfortunately, what they did not seem to do is sit back, reflect, and think about what they wanted their band to sound like.  The album feels disjointed, patchwork, and badly in need of a high school English teacher’s red pen to scrawl “Find your voice!” all over it.  There are flashes of Wilco’s country-inflected rock, the barbershop stylings of The Bobs, Queen’s vocal acrobatics, Bobby McFerrin’s love of sound effects, the high piano pop of Ben Folds, The Band’s mouth-harp twang, Andrew Bird’s whistles, Badly Drawn Boy’s swelling lyricism, Elliott Smith’s honky tonk piano, Nellie McKay’s snark, and of that breakdown section in “Ol’ Black Water” by The Doobie Brothers.  If this list sounds muddled and confused, it’s because the album often comes across that way, as though it’s the band’s final project for a “Great Masters of Alt-Pop” class. 
   
Although it is badly in need of refining, the album has moments where potential greatness peeks through.  Once the listener gets past the inexplicable old-timey movie projector noises of “Pairadice”, the harmonies of the chorus positively shimmer, and in that shimmer you can hear the band crouched low, heads up, jazz hands jazzing away, smiling bright white Broadway smiles from ear to ear.  Indeed, this album aches with unrealized potential.  In the future, What Laura Says needs to come out from under the security blanket of influence and let what lies beneath shine through.

-Liz Turner