Album Review: The Famines — 14 July 2008

The Famines
14 July 2008
The Belgravian Press

Chances are that you've never heard of The Famines—unless you've been hanging around the people from Vue Weekly. At least two of the editors were involved in the creation and publicizing of The Famines' first and, as of yet, only album. Or, you've actually seen them at various gigs they've performed in Edmonton since their stage debut on 17 July 2008, having only recorded the timely titled 14 July 2008 a few days earlier. This new seven track release is actually recorded on a low-fi cassette tape and not that a CD, even though it would have given the album much better sound quality. The tinny, garbage-y, low-bass sound is purposeful, and it works for The Famines.

The band is a duo consisting of singer/guitarist Raymond Biesinger (formerly of Vertical Struts) and drummer Garrett Heath Kruger (formerly of Wolfnote). You may remember Biesinger's wonderful illustrations that appeared in The Gateway of yesteryear.

Biesinger's wild vocals perfectly match the screeching, thrashing, brutal, late '70s-style punk exhibited on 14 July 2008. Unfortunately, sometimes the Kruger's drumming completely overwhelms the vocals on the album. The album's stand-out tracks are “Faux Wealthy,” with its attentive drum beat, and “I Like Some of the Things You Do,” with its tidy beat combined with wonderfully messy vocals.

This is a thinking man's punk-rock band: the lyrics—which are just barely comprehensible in the recording—are brilliant in print. The Lyrics were about the only thing I really wanted to find out from the 268-page tome that accompanies the cassette, but I found myself flipping through it anyway to see the personal information reports (including addresses, credit scores, and fingerprints) involved in the recording and production of 14 July 2008. The band members claim to be lovers of detail, but perhaps they went a teeny bit overboard with this booklet. I guess it'll be the band members' own damn fault if they get any calls from creepy stalkers threatening to do them in.

I think that The Famines would sound better live, in some hot, tiny bar filled with a good, sweaty crowd. Biesinger and Kruger exert a ton of energy on this album, and most of that energy doesn't shine through very well in the confines of a cheap cassette tape.