Narrow Head fill the shady niches in between Hum or The mane through Moments of Clarity solid for the third time with their amalgam of shoegaze, grungy 90s alternative rock and post hardcore.
With a also gen Failure, Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones or My Vitriol associating stylistic mixture so that Narrow Head been following for a decade now and like by colleagues Fleshwater is currently quite trendy, aesthetically it is also immediately on the hook again, but in substance it continues to show obvious weaknesses.
And that, although the first two thirds of Moments of Clarity already like a reparation for the mixed predecessor 12th House Rock feel by Narrow Head their eclectically copied trademarks only vary vaguely in spectrum despite the unbiting, uniform production. Sometimes as harmless singsong (The Real) and sometimes snappier (the title song) or faster (Sunday), then as tiresomely repetitive Inlet-Tribute that changes from hard to soft without creating a flattening momentum (Trepanation), before the mixture in the middle section, which in any case never acts as consistently as the obvious role models, after the nicely acoustically tidy swaying Breakup Song the air runs out: Fine Day annoying with its simple shaking rhyme and the a la Silversun Pickups emerging more menacing shades are wasted because the various guitar waves show no different intensity, meanwhile Caroline as a formulaic standard is a redundant routine filler.
Reinforced in the last third Moments of Clarity its amplitudes skilfully, although always tending towards a fundamental ambivalence, because the songwriting too often simply has something randomly meandering about it, doesn’t find the point that could really force outstanding moments.
The World practices a really well-intentioned one My Bloody Valentine-Default about its 08/15 content and Garhead seems almost like a rudimentary approximation Brand New from the metallic post-hardcore perspective, though the struggling roar remains pastiche. Flesh & Solitude on the other hand, Adrenaline adapts almost as well as it does with aggressively meant shouts We‘re Not Here to Loved and also has a really strong (drummed) finale. The quiet elegy of The Comedown However, it can’t achieve the envisaged anthemic element – especially here it is noticeable that the mostly thin, sighing vocals of Jacob Duarte as a relatively crooked, swaying weak point and general Achilles’ heel of the band simply can’t cope with the strong parts and apart from that also remains an exchangeable cliché. (In this regard, the following also applies: with better vocals, the 48 minutes would definitely be rated just above the average of the scene).
The appendix Soft to Touch makes afterwards than felt Bush-Remix with the tropically prancing drum machine, nothing wrong, but without ideas or impulses it gets boring at some point too erratic. Quite symptomatic, or: no matter how much one likes the less original ones Narrow Head would also like it far better than it can ultimately be justified (because the mere desire to want to hear the bands that are the inspiration for this rather than this thoroughly solid third work with all its small flaws is constantly present), also remains Moments of Clarity rather a very okay contingency plan for the genre balancing act.
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