Dear and the Headlights - Official Site, MySpace

Before today, I didn’t know Dear and the Headlights. I did, however, know Snow Patrol, Travis, and Coldplay. Dear and the Headlights sounds like everything else that has come out of the UK in the past 3 years. In fact, the smattering of British tenors the world has happily received into the pop culture landscape has spiked in less time than that, and rightly so. I mean, England’s crowded, the thing is: Dear and the Headlights hail from Tempe, Arizona.

This kind of screws me up, as my next joke was going to go something like, “When was the last time you heard of a good band from, say, Arizona? England’s got great bands from towns named Brillingsbrook, or whatever.” Let’s just scratch the whole demographic labeling thing for now, shall we? Bad start.

Dear’s first album, Small Steps, Heavy Hooves, is a good one. I’m not going to lie, I was instant messaging fellow music snobs the heads up to the band’s MySpace page after the first two tracks. Unfortunately, it remained just a “good” album. With hardly any standout tracks (save for the album opener, “Oh No!” and the clever “Hallelujah”), the album is essentially a staring contest between the band and their potential. Ian Metzger’s vocals are astonishingly original for being wrapped in music that feels like sex with a cheerleader. Unfortunately, it’s been done before.

Many, many times before.

That said, nailing a cheerleader isn’t all the bad, and in the grand scheme of things, Small Steps, Heavy Hooves, as stated, is indeed a good album. The listener won’t be turned off by any of the tracks here, Dear and the Headlights have a digestible sound. Goes down easy. (Again, cheerleaders do, too.) Not that anyone wants to pick up a record and be forced to try and ‘get it’. The indie scene is constantly plagued by bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Architecture in Helsinki, both credible arguments for the removal of one’s eardrums. Atrocious bands who expect the listener to adjust their natural taste for melody and flow to sheer cacophony. Bands that are nothing more than posters in Seth’s room on the OC or t-shirts on hipsters at better bands’ shows, like The Secret Machines.

Thankfully, Dear and the Headlights have released an album that proves they are none of those things. For now, Dear and the Headlights are a decent band with a good debut album. We hear through this album that they make good music, and hope that the band soon realizes and grasps their better potential.

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