The Oranges Band - The World & Everything In It

Genre rock Publisher Lookout Records External Links Official Website Lookout Records

It seems like there have been a million bands like The Oranges Band. They play low-key indie rock with low-key hooks and production. The listener has to be paying attention.

The early-REM comparisons are fair. The vocals are buried so deep in the mix you wonder if singer-producer Roman Kuebler even knows he is being mic'd.

It shouldn't work as it touches on all the indie rock cliches like mumbled vocals and determinedly low-fi guitar playing. But it does well enough to recommend, its songs burrowing their way into the subconscious once the listener starts paying attention.

Some will compare The Oranges Band to Spoon, especially when they use swatches of keyboard noise to accentuate the guitar, bass and drums. However, I tend to hear more of a comparison to The Hold Steady in the conversational style of the vocals. If given a choice between one or the other, I'll take The Hold Steady with its more sprightly post-punk.

This is a good, smart band that might have fit better in the American indie scene of 1995 than today. They lock into a great groove a couple of times on The World & Everything In It, and I left wishing they would do it more often. But they're no Ted Leo & The Pharmacists.

It takes courage for them to be on Lookout Records, a Bay Area-based label known more for churning out pop-punk than something much as complex as The Oranges Band. The people who peruse The Lookout catalog perusing for Mr. T Experience records probably aren't going to know what the heck to make of this.

Ultimately, those little vocal hooks on songs like "Open Air" are the reminders of what people have liked about American indie rock in the first place.