The Slideshow Effect, dream-pop duo Memoryhouse’s first full-length album, is a pinpoint accurate title, for better or worse. Washing over you like a series of semi-significant photographs that linger for a few, short moments before losing their conjured luster, this album is sleepy but not dreamy, pretty but not beautiful and tender but not touching. Contrary to the band’s name, The Slideshow Effect is forgettable.
To its credit, though, the record has some timely touches that make a few tracks worth revisiting. The slide guitar on “Bonfire” is distinctly Mazzy Star, except Denise Nouvion’s voice lacks the youthful sexiness that Hope Sandoval displayed on classic songs such as “Fade Into You.” And “Heirloom,” besides the female vocals, could pass for an outtake on Real Estate’s nostalgic, memorable record Days, with its light and summery guitar riffs.
Other songs, however, are bogged down by their atypical cleanliness. It’s anyone’s guess why Memoryhouse chose to axe the reverb-tinged vocals they used on their first EP in favor of a sound that is dry and stale.
A track like “The Kids Were Wrong,” for instance, wastes a memorable guitar riff and effectively bare drum beat because Nouvion’s vocals don’t sound dreamy at all. For a genre focused on sensory images of free love and youthful yearning, everything sounds, unfortunately, claustrophobic and stuffy.
On the whole, The Slideshow Effect portrays the noble pursuit of a young duo attempting to follow its veteran label mates’ past success. Beach House, also on the Sub Pop label, found bliss in a barren place with 2010’s Teen Dream. That album took dream-pop, a misunderstood genre, and effortlessly made it accessible to the mainstream.
But despite its painstaking attempt to replicate it, The Slideshow Effect won’t achieve the same success as Teen Dream because Memoryhouse hasn’t yet learned the No. 1 rule of the trade: The sleepiest songs do not yield the best dreams.
VERDICT: The Slideshow Effect isn’t effectively dreamy enough to make any vital musical statements.
diversions@umdbk.com
