• Shadow Rogue Novelupdates
• Rogue Wave The Band

This really is a great album, one of the five best of the year in my opinion. I agree with others who have said they are similar to the Shins This really is a great album, one of the five best of the year in my opinion. I agree with others who have said they are similar to the Shins but better.they really are better, better melodies, better strong structure, better sound.just all-around better. It will be interesting to see if they can duplicate the brilliance shown here on their sophomore release.

Shadow Rogue Novelupdates

Rogue Wave The Band

Because of the unfortunate necessity that with Ben Gibbard's voice must also come his 'minor success just makes me sadder and more cynically nostalgic, apparently' poetry, I've been waiting years for a group that could take the few redeemable aspects of Death Cab ('Scientist Studies,' mostly) and transform it into something more exciting, if not also more substantial. San Francisco's Rogue Wave seem like they could bring the end to my wait, and after spending several years in obscurity before Sub Pop finally decided to give their debut wider distribution, Out of the Shadow will finally get the chance to convince more than a few hundred people. Don't get me wrong, though; it's not that Rogue Wave are just a Death Cab imitator that managed to get it right. Rogue Wave's frontman Zack Rogue is very clearly a devoted fan of nearly all forms of accessible indie rock, and the group's only real connection to DCFC would be Rogue's soft, sometimes fey vocals. Elsewhere, the record also exhibits the deceivingly simple pop hooks garnished with slight electronic flourishes a la the first +/- record, and James Mercer's ability to pull a great hook out of almost any chord progression, and Colin Meloy's flair for campy storytelling, and, as evidenced on album centerpiece 'Endgame,' an effortless channeling of Figure 8-era Elliott Smith -- all while incorporating the subtle synth arrangements of Self's more timid material. So how could a group that could be fairly accurately described in a laundry-list style paragraph actually have anything new or worthwhile to bring to the table? Well, I don't know about 'new,' per se; though they spend a lot of time on Shadow making sure the three and four-chord progressions that most of the tracks are centered around have an intriguing, layered production (i.e.