"Cascade" by What About Eric?
Review
As even the most casual reader will surely have picked up on, one of my great recent enthusiasms has been for the Coventry Music ‘Live On Stage' project based at The Tin.
With articles on the generality of what's going on, I also appr4eciate the chance to write about each band as they find their feet outside the nurturing environment with gigs & releases.
Hence Project Overload featuring so regularly as they really take off, followed by Loophole.
Next out of the starting gate are What About Eric? (I assumed, like others, they were named in tribute to the 2014 film but in reality it's in honour of Libbi's Grandad) who really caught my ear & eye at the summer showcase gig at the HMV Empire.
They've been getting invited to play more & more gigs & now their debut release "Cascade" (produced by Live On Stage in-house producer/tutor/mentor Mason Le Long) is out for your enjoyment. And indeed stimulation since the song grabs you instantly as an effective debut should do. I say "they" but of course they deserve their names out there too: they are Libbi (guitar and vocals), Joe (guitar), Noah (bass) and Ethan on drums.
In fact everything about "Cascade" vindicates the ‘Live On Stage' philosophy: encouraging musicians but not nudging them into boxes: emancipating them to write songs which honestly reflect who they are and judging the timing right so they are not rushed into recording but so the process captures them fresh & raring to go. This is vindicated by the fact that as only the second song they wrote it not only "marked a turning point for us from a songwriting perspective" but pointed them towards their current more shoegazing style of play: in other words, premature recording might have resulted in a version which didn't necessarily reflect their more developed sound while leaving it longer would have deprived us the audience of a treat.
It also ensures that while the bands graduating from the project share similar commitments to their art, they all sound unique: there is no pressure on them to adopt a homogenous style.
The sense of artistic integrity extends to the sound which reflects Mason's personal values & investment in the music of What About Eric?': this is clearly both a song whose qualities they all believe in and one which sells their sense of mission effectively. As with all his productions, he adroitly walks that tightrope between capturing the communal collage of voices & instruments while allowing you to hear each individual element clearly: both aspects reward you.
The playing is, as I've hinted above but I'll make explicit now, excellent. They have honed the song to perfection and that allows playfulness with the dynamics: something I imagine they worked hard to make sound so easy.
Musically this sense of movement between contrasting sections makes for continuing interest to the listener (and keeps us on our toes) and while the general feel is suggestive of that shoegaze approach, it's not in thrall to its conventions either: indeed the band make it clear that this is a general description and not some desire to be boxed into a genre: and regular readers will know how I value that sort of commitment to originality. (I should also share with you at this point that they do cite inspirations including Radiohead and Wisp on the lyrical side).
Another aspect of composition that I also tend to bang on about is that of providing lyrics which offer the listener freedom of interpretation rather than hammering them on the head with the blindingly obvious. Thus I was delighted to hear that Libbi (who seems to have been the lyricist) deliberately "wrote in a poetic way, to leave it open to interpretation". Hat raised. The words are dreamy & allusive & offer opportunities for emotional exploration. Equally great was the revelation that she chose the title after writing the words as it "really resonated with how she was feeling when she wrote the song". I've long thought that selecting a title for a song should be the final act of writing rather than the first.
It's a remarkably mature debut song for a band coming straight out of a project for school aged musicians: but then one can already see that as a characteristic of all the graduates. This is an environment which stimulates writing as well as playing which defies conventional expectations.
"Cascade" is a fine & apt debut for What About Eric? but such is the arc of their progress that it probably will surprise those lucky enough to have caught them live less than those not yet so fortunate.
I'm trying to support the band through writing about them & I'm conscious that voicing excessive expectations isn't necessarily terribly helpful to them, especially at this stage, but the facts are that I've been looking forwards to hearing them recorded since I first heard them play & I think it's great & the number of others hearing them play, liking them and booking them for more gigs is palpably growing too. It's far from just me.
