The Cassettes - The Cassettes

Album packaging is an important additive to the overall package of any band. Typically good album art will let you know the basic direction and sound of a band. If it's got a bunch of tattooed guys looking morose and spitting at the camera, don't expect a lot of acoustic ballads. The Cassettes album artwork is a bunch of hand-drawn style cartoony characters with colors that capture the feel of summer, handwritten lyrics, and just alot of doodles. Using our previous hypothesis that the album artwork reveals the bands sound we can safely assume that this band is having some fun, not neccasarily going for a super slick packaging to be featured as billboard artwork that anyone can relate to, and kind of self-indulgent in the overall feel.. just doodling as they see fit. But none of those are bad things at all, they are a good representation of the band. This self-titled disc from The Cassettes is a eleven tracks of psychedelic, garage-rock, lo-fi doodling. The whole basis of the band emerged from the four-track recordings of frontman Shelby Cinca and didn't catapult themselves much farther beyond that in terms of full sound. This isn't lo-fi like you think The Strokes are lo-fi, this is really a bunch of guys recording themselves having a good time (i.e. the self-indulgent portion of the artwork description). Expect the standard bass, drums, lots of guitar (though not so over the top that you can't handle it), and some nice subtle keyboard and piano additions driving the song along. The Cassettes are the perfect band for those people that love that 60's and 70's era style of recordings but wish that the majority of today's "guitar rockers" wouldn't extend their solo's out ad infinitum. [www.thecassettesmusic.com]