Urban Sleep (2009)
This CD was sent to me by Urban Sleep Discs along with a few others. I'm trying my best to get all of the Japanese CDs I've acquired in the past year reviewed for this site, so if there seems to be more of them than usual, this is one of the reasons why (Another reason being that very few new albums tend to get released in January, so it's a good time to play catch up with some others).
Does It Float is playing an extremely catchy variant of melodic, emo tinged punk rock. The thing that stands out to me more than anything else is the impressively complex lead guitar noodling in each song. It adds a level of depth and musicianship that you don't hear just anywhere, but the band never dives too far into self indulgent guitar wanking. Every note means something and serves the incessantly catchy hooks that the band manage to sneak into every song.
It actually reminds me a lot of the first few Three Minute Movie songs I heard from their split with Braid and that 3" CD that came out around the same time. Mix in some Scaries style pop hooks and that's a pretty decent road map to the sounds that Does It Float are working with. It may not be a brand new release, having come out in 2009. But it's definitely work backtracking to check out.
Unfortunately, I'm not able to find any of their songs online to link to, But the band also has a split 7" with Stay Clean Jolene that came out on All In Vinyl some time back that's easier to hear online. I'm just happy to add more song by these guys to the collection.
