Artist: N.E.R.D.
Album: Seeing Sounds
Record label: Virgin/ Interscope
Rating:
Reviewer: Alex Thornton

Just when the corpse of rap-rock was being picked over by the vultures of pop culture, N.E.R.D. reanimates the genre and produced the zombified Seeing Sounds, which brims with ideas, but it is deficit on the mind blowing sounds that typify their work for other artist. The album has good sounding drums, amazing effects, chants to get adrenaline pumping, and the signature Neptune arrangements, but falls short in one important area: the guitars on the album grate the soul and distract from the songs on the whole. That is a huge problem on an album that wears its rock star ambitions on it sleeves. The Neptunes sounded like they may be up to the task when they undertook the production of eighties favorite Duran Duran latest album, but could not transfer that when they were writing the songs. When a group can not master the central instrument essential to their genre, the group should reconsider their approach, especially if it is unnecessary.

The album possesses many high points despite it many flaws. "Everybody Nose", with its cheeky subject matter and adrenaline packed backing is a party starter for those who do not mind moshing. "Spaz" invites another long forgotten genre, drum and bass, to the party and fuses it perfectly into the N.E.R.D aesthetic. However, even the high points of the album suffer from a certain amount of indigestion: the album is best enjoyed in bite sized servings. The fact that these songs were featured on commercials is not a surprise; they are perhaps perfect for that purpose.

The group also shows a deep eighties fetish that tends towards the Go-Go, Bananarama, and of course, Duran Duran. If the band wants to move forward, it should focus on such fare, which strangely excises most of the rapping for Pharrell vocalizations. "Windows" or "You Know What" demonstrates N.E.R.D. at their best, blending weird sounds with steady, but intoxicating drums. If the group could focus their attention on this sort of fare instead of standard issue Korn guitar work, the cohesion of their album would increase.

Seeing Sounds is the work of obviously talented musicians working hard to make something different that is interesting, but marginal at best. It contains moments of obvious pleasure, but the band would be better served by focusing on their eighties obsession and fusion techniques rather than trying to force meat head metal onto the occasion. The group has enough punk energy and hip hop swagger to make a good album: they just have not yet.