Chiaro - Vol II

I met this band while at the GoDundee music festival where they gave me a copy of their latest album. A 9 track CD cut at home by themselves. They are an alternative rock band, and count various bands as influences including the likes of Muse and there is a hint of Radiohead in there too.

The CD itself is a fairly relaxed affair throughout, with the exception of a couple of tracks like Dolphin and Misguided. I'm not really too keen on the slower sedate tracks so for me the standout tracks on this CD are Dolphin , Last Chance, I Can Be Saved and Inevitability. The vocals in Last Chance are pretty powerful but there is not enough consistency through all the tracks. I don't know if it is the production or not but I can't help feel that a little more care would have yielded greater results. More conviction would be ace, and would definately add a lot more life to some of the songs on this.

I quite like Innocence also. It's a pretty basic but effective track, but I'm not sure that having too many similar sounding tracks on one CD is a good thing. Some differentiation would go down really well and I know that the band has the potential to add more diverse sounding tracks to their catalogue. They've described their music as an individualistic sound, but they shouldn't get stuck in that safety net. The only reason i'm saying that is because I feel they need a bit more variety.

I Can Be Saved is one of those tracks on the CD that grows on you after you've had a few listens through. I think this is one of the more musically solid joints on this.

To sum up I think with some fine tuning and consistency this band will become solid performers both recorded and live. I know they are working hard and have a fair amount of gigs lined up so it shouldn't be long at all.

The band are
BARRY PHILLIPS, VOCALS/GUITAR
RUSSELL MURRAY, DRUMS (myspace lists Russell Angus?)
CALLUM JOHNSTON, BASS
JUAN ANTONIO, KEYBOARD/BACKING VOCALS

Track listing
I Can Be Saved
Inevitability
Dolphin
Misguided
Monkeys
Healing Silence
Innocence
Last Chance (F**k Sake)
Separate

For more information check them out on their MySpace page.