Album review: Audrye Sessions' self-titled full-length

There's a certain kind of band for whom Radiohead is still a '90s Brit-rock act that peaked around "The Bends" and lost its way when the group brought laptops onstage. Muse is the biggest example of this phenomenon; Oakland's Audrye Sessions is the latest.

From the first rousing chords of "Turn Me Off" through the relentless falsetto of "Julianna" and the obligatory acoustic mood piece "New Year's Day," the whole album feels like a meticulous attempt to resurrect a specific sound in time to ride an anticipated wave of nostalgia. But if Audrye Sessions is to do for mid-'90s Anglophile guitar rock what scads of peers have done for '80s dance music in recent years, it's going to have to find some more memorable hooks on which to hang its bona fides.

The effortlessly regal "Where You'll Find Me" and punkish "The Paper Face" come closest, but can we just say the snake of revivalism has long since eaten its own tail and be done with it?

-August Brown

Audrye Sessions
"Audrye Sessions"
Black Seal Records
One and a half stars

Photo credit: Sean Desmond, courtesy Audrye Sessions

The Audrye Sessions' self-titled album is slated to be released on Feb. 17.