Brooklyn-based band, X Ambassadors, have released their debut LP, VHS. Produced by Alex Da Kid via KIDinaKORNER(Imagine Dragons, Skyler Grey), the album boasts a whopping 20 tracks including 7 interludes.
An interlude opens the album followed by commercial-friendly track, ‘Renegades‘, and then we go right back into another interlude. The album carries on with more gentle tracks like ‘Unsteady‘ and ‘Gorgeous‘. Although both are forgettable songs, they are nothing compared to their Imagine Dragons collaboration, ‘Fear‘ – a strong candidate to being the worst track from the album.
Most tracks posses that Imagine Dragons-esque boisterous and obnoxious sound, but a couple of songs stray away from that overly-beaten path. ‘Nervous‘ has a little Ricky Martin flare, which spices the album in both an amusing and confusing way. Loveless may be the only silver lining to this album, so it sticks out like a sore thumb— imagine John Newman and Sam Smith collaborated and made an extremely rough cut of a new hit.
One would think that an album with a tiresome 20 tracks would have a mind-blowing finale, however VHS ends with yet another interlude. If the interlude does not count, then technically the last song would be ‘Naked‘, a vocalized version of Michael Cera’s awkward sexting attempt, “From my head to my toes/Feeling overexposed/I wanna be naked with you.” So what is the better finale? Take your pick.
VHS may be all over the place genre wise, but the tracks all have something in common: dreadful repetition. Repeating phrases like, “Cause you make me feel gorgeous,” lure listeners to sing along, but the repetition is both poorly executed and annoying.
The album is overly produced and would sound better if the tracks were stripped of many layers. English producer Alex Da Kid seems to love using unnecessarily loud and overpowering sounds. It may seem to give X Ambassadors a grandiose and impressive fanfare but in reality, it’s overbearing and essentially just noise. After listening to 6 songs or so, it becomes exhausting.
The thick fog of compressed guitars and percussion buries the potential for X Ambassadors hidden talent and Sam Harris’s dynamic voice. Unfortunately, instead of leaving you feeling inspired, VHS leaves you with a headache.
