Atlanta indie band Warm in the Wake releases new album

Warm in the Wake, an indie band hailing from Atlanta, will be releasing their new album, Gold Dust Trail Saturday. In preparation for their new, full-length album, the group recently released an EP of the same name.

When you open the cardboard case of Gold Dust Trail, the first thing you will notice is a black sparrow silhouette transposed over a man operating his lawnmower.

It is definitely random, but a less funny random than you would get, say, from the guys at Adult Swim (another group of Atlantan natives).

Unfortunately, this image is no more than a shallow attempt to pass for typical indie-fare art.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that the image ends up neatly paralleling the quality of the music within.

Warm in the Wake hails from the local outlet Livewire Recordings, a label with some interesting acts including Gregg Allman's son's band, Honeytribe.

This quartet is billed as aspiring to the likes of Wilco and The Shins, comparisons which seem to fit well enough at first.

It quickly becomes apparent that something is missing, and this likely stems from the band's philosophy of keeping things uncomplicated.

They seek to show the beauty in simplicity, something which many indie bands do, but very few do well. Warm in the Wake overcompensates, and the result is something too simple, to the point that it lacks musical ideas.

It is probably more than a little unfair to be overly critical of a debut EP. Gold Dust Trail isn't much more than an attempt to garner a bit of name recognition before Warm in the Wake's new album debuts later in the year.

Though the band apparently took three songs from their only previous full-length album on another label and bundled them with four new offerings to create this EP.

However, that previous CD came together in late 2003, and the small bit of differentiation between the new and old songs here indicates a lack of growth potential that's sorely needed from this point on.

That said, there are certainly a couple of good directions that I can see Warm in the Wake taking if they do evolve. The music you will hear inside Gold Dust Trail is not so much unlistenable as it is incomplete.

If the songs were just fleshed out with a little more musical progression per song they would improve dramatically.

I think that the band's best moments come on the song "What You Seek," where they take a post-rock feel and essentially condense it down to something digestible for non-fans of the genre.

It works well, and I feel like it would be an interesting and marketable move for these guys to focus on that aspect of their sound.

Indie music today has become much more popular, and as an indirect result the genre is suffering a bit.

I am not trying to say that indie is bad just because it has been more discovered; I am not that much of an elitist. But I can see that there is an over-saturation of generic bands jumping into the pool. That is the position of Warm in the Wake.

They are painfully mediocre in a genre that's begging for something really different.

I'm sure that the casual indie follower will find something to enjoy here, people who buy in to indie music's greatest scheme- that it's still the fighting-against-the-grain alternative to popular music.

But other fans, those who understand that indie has effectively become the popular music, will probably be less inclined to enjoy a work that appears to bank on the artificial uniqueness of being a part of the indie genre.

In the interest of full disclosure, the CD I was listening to right before first sampling this EP was a heavy album that dealt with the dismal and carnal nature of a life torn by sex addiction.

So afterwards it was a little hard to take seriously lyrics that include, "Hearts want one another...hearts get lifted all of the time."

I will not deny that sometimes the mood calls for those types of light and pillowy reflections, but it's not the type of thing I tend to gravitate towards.

Perhaps when they perform live Warm in the Wake can conjure that mood and their faults will be more forgiving.

They will be performing Jan. 27 at the Star Bar and Jan. 31 at the Drunken Unicorn for those interested.