APRIL 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS
SoundRabbit - This Roomb Becomes a Crowd
By Nate Harper
The track Park from Boulder quartet SoundRabbit does well to capture the spirit of “This Rooms Becomes a Crowd.” The song tells the story of a homeless man spilling his heart out to a cop, seemingly evoking pity for this victim of society, only to turn the track around and show that the derelict is comfortable with his surroundings because he still has love.
This sometimes uneven mix of emotion and ideas resurfaces many times throughout the course of the album’s 12 tracks. Lyrically the group runs the gamut from simple love songs to the sometimes arduous journey of finding your spiritual identity. And though the band shows a knack for the occasional memorable lyric or turn of phrase, it’s musically where the group truly shines.
Like Jack Johnson infused with tropical rhythms, steel guitars and pianos, this is, as a friend of mine once put it, barbeque music. Never angry and rarely dark, SoundRabbit consistently demonstrates that their primary stock-in-trade is writing light and catchy songs.
Hazel, the opening song, is as straight ahead as any, a paean to the girl who, for the band, is love. Hints of reggae surface as the distortion-free guitars playfully surround a staccato drumbeat while vocalist Russ LePrie’s breathy vocals strike an agreeable pitch with the music, the end product being the sounds of a laid-back summer day.
And for the first half of the album, things proceed in a similar fashion, remaining on the surface as the group rocks and talks about jobs and girls and the like. The second half of “This Room Becomes a Crowd” finds the band a little more introspective, even if the music retains its pop-sheen.
Faith and God pop up, and the band handles them as well as one could expect a group of young Boulderites to. And yet this melodrama works well for the band. To hear their unapologetically poppy sound delivered with such a straight face, it would be hard to imagine them doing singer-songwriter material, so their polarization between crushes and encroaching government somehow works.
Aside from their music, SoundRabbit is also garnering some attention for their unique solution to distribution. Fans can subscribe to “RBT Backstage” through the group’s website. Doing so gives them access to the band’s music, insider perks, and some of the money even goes to charity.
Check out soundrabbit.com.