The Drug Models Love - Slow Hope Parade

New York based “performer” and “composer”Kevin McGinnis isThe Drug Models Loves and this feels very much like a solo project.  New York itself is claimed as an inspiration for the songs that were conceived during “blackouts, benders, moments of bliss, philosophical isolation and spiritual derailment”. So far, so pretentious. What this basically boils down to it a fairly clear love of the more tender moments of the Smashing Pumpkins (particularly the ace track “Palm Satellites”) and all things shoegaze.

Things get off to a bit of shaky start with “Wrapped Up In Honey” which has a very bedroom recorded feel to it with some very tinny drum machine. This song would be probably be better served by a full band. Slightly dodgy guitar distortion on the next track “Sometimes A City Street” doesn’t really help either, but again the quality of the song is definitely there. The execution of it needs a bit more polish and a much bigger sound.

The Pumpkins influence starts showing it’s face from track three onwards – I can even hear Turin Brakes for some reason too. There are many indulgent string flourishes across a lot of the tracks that add some nice touches to proceedings. Clearly a lot of thought and effort has gone into the crafting of these tunes but the whole one man band approach doesn’t come off as well as it probably should do. Weirdly Alex Newport (ex-Fudge Tunnel, Nailbomb) has been on mixing duties, but this doesn’t seem to achieve a whole lot.

Overall, this is pretty good effort but comes across as quite self-indulgent. The writing is top notch and the songs are certainly there, it’s just that they lack the oomph that they seem to be intended to have. Unfortunately things start to drag towards the end of the album from the title track onwards. Perhaps the sort of quality control you get in a full band setup might have been a good idea?