Electric President

Electric President

(Morr)

Record Review by Amber Henson

On Electric President’s recently released debut album, you will find the lost tracks to the Garden State soundtrack.  Or at least, that’s what it sounds like.  I feel like it’s my duty to find Zach Braff and give him this CD, only to have him hand it back and tell me he’s known about the songs for months.

The band plays slow emo in the vein of The Postal Service, The Shins, and Modest Mouse—only with far more paranoid lyrics.  Their debut has great melodies and rhythms, and if you don’t listen closely to the lyrics, you’ll assume that lead singer Ben Cooper’s soft, infantile voice is telling you wonderful things over the gentle acoustic guitar and iBook beats.  But all the songs are about how we’re all robots or clones or machines and our bodies mere cages for our insides and our parts don’t work.  No conventional love songs here.

The press release told me that this CD would sound different by the sea, so I got in the car and drove up the Pacific Coast Highway.  And it worked.  On “Insomnia,” the album’s second track, Cooper repeats “So, so, so, so damn slow,” which fits nicely as you wind your way up through Malibu and its steady scenery and constant surf.

One warning:  Cooper and Alex Kane love to stop the music entirely at points, seemingly just to completely throw you off—and they do this almost every other track.  It’s a little jarring at times, but, overall, Electric President provide the perfect soundtrack for a dreamlike drive up the coast.