American Watercolor Movement

It Takes Fifteen To Tango in My Book, What Book Do You Read?

Record Review by Alexis Roberts

In my book it only takes two to tango but apparently I am reading a different book than American Watercolor Movement because they seem to think it takes fifteen. It Takes Fifteen to Tango in My Book, What Book Do You Read? is their third full length album and their second self-released album. Up until this point, they haven’t seen too much success and I can’t say that I am surprised.

It Takes Fifteen to Tango is what you could call “art rock”—a label that I have always hated to deal with. “Art Rock” can mean so many different things, but I normally refer to a band as art rockers when I am making fun of them. In this case I seriously wouldn’t know how else to categorize American Watercolor Movement.

AWM is a band that plays ambient music, while their “singer” spouts out bizarre free verse poetry over top of it in an overdramatic voice. Musically they aren’t bad; in fact, they are innovative and precise. The band really seems to know what type of sound they want to accomplish as a whole and it’s actually very good. They have catchy beats, and you could probably dance to it if you were feeling bold. The downfall is clearly the unsettling vocals. It makes listening almost impossible. If they just dropped the vocals altogether, they would probably be another ass-kicking Jersey band that wowed us all.

Alas, the problem with trying something new and attempting to be avant-garde is that you won’t always hit the mark. Unfortunately AWM is just left of center. Hopefully in the future they will come full circle with a great album. Sadly for them, It Takes Fifteen to Tango wasn’t it.