Rainer Maria - Long Knives Drawn
(Polyvinyl)
Rainer Maria - Ears Ring EP
(Polyvinyl)
Rainer Maria used to be an anomaly in the emo music scene—a band that actually was able to sing with what appeared to be genuine emotion. Now there doesn't seem to be much genuine about them.
After moving to NYC a few years back, the band tweaked their sound to remove some of the emo artifacts, and the result was a pretty pleasing indie pop album, A Better Version of Me. A simple change in sound... no problem. However, now three years later, and NYC punk bands are something of a "rage" (or send me into one, I'm not sure), and now Rainer Maria has rediscovered their more punk, more rock roots. And I'm left saying, "Why?"
The album's radio-friendly "Ears Ring" finds singer Caithlin De Marrais singing more maturely than I want her to against guitars that are more overdriven and more aggressive than I want them to be. She tries to use the lower part of her register in order to sound less like a little girl. But she's no Janis Joplin; I don't think she could be a gritty blues singer if she wanted to be. The song is infectious, which is both good and bad, meaning it'll sound good the first few times, and then fall apart soon after that.
While "Long Knives" and "CT Catholic" are similarly ferocious rock, not all of the album is balls-to-the-wall (boobs-to-the-wall?) rock. "The Awful Truth of Loving" is a bright and lite indie pop song, not unlike A Better Version of Me. "Situation: Relation" is a somber slowburner. But these songs just really aren't that good. Rainer Maria should purr like a kitten, not roar like a tiger, but here they can't even get the purring right.
Lyrically, Rainer Maria has become more awkward. While Pretty Girls Make Graves sing "We can never go home; We'll be okay on our own," on "The Get Away," Rainer Maria sing "Let's get out; I was thinking we can go and live in a monastery" on "The Imperatives." Which one of those two sentiments seems real? Both songs are about escape. Pretty Girls Make Graves need to escape from family and their control. Rainer Maria need to escape from the patterns of bad relationships. Which I guess is fitting, after you "Get Away" together and go to NYC, a few years later you have to sing about why you fight all the time. But Rainer Maria wraps it up in a bad metaphor which do nothing to strengthen the song's tepid emotions.
The album teaser EP includes "Ears Ring" and two non-album cuts, "Alchemy" and "Automatic." Both bonus songs are cliches. "Alchemy" is a twenty five year old punk song. I don't know why Rainer Maria has started to try and make twenty five year old punk songs. "Automatic" is a ten year old emo song. Kyle even sings in the background. It could easily have fit on Past Worn Searching back in 1997.
I'm all for the path less traveled, and all that, so if Rainer Maria have earnestly arrived at punk rock and photo shoots through their six year musical journey, then more power to them. But it all seems fake to me. Perhaps Pretty Girls Make Graves has taken over for Rainer Maria, not exactly by doing it better but just by being able to do it right.
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