Star Time
2005
We Have Sound
About This Album
A brash mix of indie rock and dance, Tom Vek's debut album, We Have Sound, manages to make this fusion of styles sound organic instead of opportunistic. Having explored and experimented with alt-rock in his early teens and electronica as he neared his twenties, Vek knows both styles inside out, and his incorporation of both into his own music feels completely instinctive. Vek recorded We Have Sound in his parents' garage on an old reel-to-reel recorder, and he gets a remarkably "live" feel on his recordings, especially considering that he's essentially a one-man band. The louder songs, such as album opener "C-C (You Set the Fire in Me)," sound like they were recorded in concert or at a party, creating an interesting tension with the more polished electronic atmospheres that dominate later tracks such as "On the Road." Vek has been compared to LCD Soundsystem, Beck, Bloc Party, and the Rapture, but the main similarity between him and these artists is that they're all unafraid of playing with rock and electronic idioms until they come up with their own styles. Although "The Lower the Sun" does sound a little bit like Beck attempting to make Odelay on a Stereopathetic Soul Manure budget, "I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes" puts more emphasis on the "punk" part of dance-punk than Bloc Party could.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,7 and 9)

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