Candy Bars - On Cutting Ti-gers in Half...

The local press in Candy Bars’ hometown of Tampa, Florida has been extremely receptive and gracious when reviewing the trio’s live shows or recordings, but a group can only hope to thrive on its art for so long in one place before it must move up and out to forge an existence on a larger scale. On Cutting Ti-gers in Half and Understanding Narravation is Candy Bars’ first major step to reaping a following outside of The Sunshine State, and the band’s fondness for bright melodies cloaked in some darker, orchestral indie pop garment succeeds on most every level. “We wanted to create depressing heroin pop,” says vocalist/guitarist Daniel Martinez on the record’s second track, “Works Cited.” Whether Candy Bars aimed to make that statement a reality or if it’s just another abstract reference floating harmlessly in a sea of lyrical anomalies in On Cutting Ti-gers…, the fact of the matter is that the group has pulled off an interesting, compelling debut. With the “orchestral indie pop” tag being excessively used and descriptively lacking, it’s tricky to nail any style on Candy Bars’ door. The base of the band beyond Martinez is simply Ryan Hastings on drums and Melissa Castellano on cello, and the recording process didn’t provide much more instrumentation than the trio would be sporting in a live setting. The majority of the tracks are stripped down to Martinez’s mellifluous, smoky vocalizing, plangent strings, and minimal percussion. To put it into a more easily-referenced context, The Elected minus the sunshine, or Ris Paul Ric exploring more moody, recondite atmospheres with a Southern flair. The meanings behind the songs—if there even are any—aren’t easily grasped. Martinez swerves in between inside and outside narration during his songs; his references and seemingly disconnected thoughts may be more abstruse than those of Dan Bejar and Isaac Brock. “A closed-eye Houdini with a deck of breath plays silk harp in the morning,” from “Works Cited,” or the philosophy on “Enough to Choke a Cold Air,” telling us that the average American “mistakes art, always runs, never stares enough to choke a cold air,” aren’t easily digested. But On Cutting Ti-gers in Half and Understanding Narravation on the whole is gorgeous and mysterious, tipping a hat to late, warm summer evenings and quirky expressionism. [www.newgranada.com]