Cex - Maryland Mansions
Maryland Mansions is an overly ambitious outing that makes for one painful listening experience.
It is difficult to categorize Rjyan Kidwell’s music because of its ambiguous beats and burly vocals. It lives and thrives somewhere between the vast wastelands of rap-rock and the ways of industrial music. The last few years have brought Kidwell’s perplexing music mild popularity within the indie scene having shared tour dates with the likes of Death Cab for Cutie and The Roots. After numerous releases since 1998, he returns to the scene with Maryland Mansions.
Echoing waves of soft chords quickly followed by rich, driving mechanized beats are the sounds that open up Cex’s latest release. This is quite the unassuming beginning to an album filled with thick throbs and harsh vocals. The track “Drive Off A Mountain” has Kidwell’s voice sounding somewhat similar to Everlast, until of course, he starts screaming. The ambience and slow, soft natured vocals that the track begins with fades as thumping strikes and rabid screams capture the setting. The entire album can be summed up in this sudden transfer of intensity. While this shift is a welcomed release from the slow, overly repetitious beginning of the song, it still lacks substance; seemingly replacing it with distortion and screams. It’s sad to say that “Drive Off A Mountain” was the only track that evoked even the slightest bit of interest.
The second track, “Stop Eating”, begins with a beat that sounds as if it were born in the eighties but happened to find its way here. This backbone is the only good thing about “Stop Eating” and as soon as he begins to “rap” I was reminded of a Vanilla Ice/Linkin Park union and this is never a good thing. Think rap/rock by way of Fred Durst and Linkin Park as played against an industrial backdrop and you’re nearly there. The lyrics are insipid despite his obvious effort to create something personal and honest. “I want to make a record instead of taking drugs ...” it simply reeks of somebody trying too hard to write something meaningful. The album just seems empty, the tracks are mostly forgettable, and the only thing I can think of when listening to this album is “Why is this considered good by many current artists?”
Maryland Mansions is an overly ambitious outing that makes for one painful listening experience. Maybe some can see through the dreadfully vapid lyrics and strained vocal delivery to somehow find something that defines worth, but I came up empty handed.
(Jade Tree Records)