I often see the adage 'if you've got nothing nice to say, say nothing,' being dropped while perusing forums and other corners of the Internet. Usually, it's said in relation to poetry. It seems that some people are sensitive to criticism, and are unable to accept, or simply can’t tell, that there's an awful lot of bloody awful poetry out there. Me, I try to avoid being tactless and negative for the sake of it, but I do believe that sometimes it's necessary to be cruel to be kind.
Just as the recent poetry explosion has seen a lot of terrible poets occupy infinite virtual space with atrocious free verse, so the Internet has also enabled lots of fairly lousy bands to be heard, often making it hard to find the good bands in the rising tide of dross.
|
In fairness, Secrets of Kaplan's 'E.P.' isn't terrible, although it does suffer from amateurish, home-recorded production. Of the four tracks, 'Vapour Trail' is the strongest and sounds like it's the most evolved composition. There’s a nice looping guitar motif on 'Lifejackets' that would sound at home in a Vessels track, but in the main, there’s nothing about this that really stands out, and it sounds like, well, any one of a million local bands you might see propping up the bill at a small venue. Needs more work.
Secrets of Kaplan Online
|
