Tapes 'n Tapes

Around the middle of the last decade, just as blogs and websites began to usurp college radio and zines as the authority on underground rock, bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, White Denim and Tapes 'n Tapes found considerable fanfare minus record deals. With the release of their second LP, Tapes 'n Tapes mistakenly assumed the iron would stay hot without improving their craft. On Outside, their third LP, the Minneapolis, MN four-piece humbly return to square one, self-producing a set of songs that strive to come off as rich, innovative and most of all, relevant. In its finer moments, Outside succeeds: the verse-outro of "Outro" breaks from the verse-chorus-verse standard, while "Hidee Ho" utilizes double-barrelled shouts as hooks and "Mighty Long" finds vocalist Josh Grier bending and shaping melodies. Outside is a step forward, but in 2011, you need more than a few surface changes to convince audiences to re-believe the hype.