The People Involved - self-titled 
Rating: 

When the opening guitar drone comes in at the beginning, my first thought was "the new Radiohead album?"  That thought eventually went away with further listening and the voice of The People Involved's frontman and singer, Chris Anthony.  A bit of a Radiohead influence pervades their sound still but with some of The Cure and World Music influences thrown in and lyrics that at times are more concrete and still manage to have some wit, such as in "Cantilever" ("She found Jesus/I guess he was lost/A little pissed off/Can you believe it") or the song "Hey Jude Law".  I'm assuming the actor.  Got me what their beef is but apparently it has something to do with the frontman being "the son of Dabbs O' Bannon".  The second half of the CD is actually better than the first with the anthemic "Some Resemblance" to the best track on the album, the solemn "My Name" which comes off sounding like a Renaissance-era folk tune without being dated. 

It's more stripped down whereas other songs on the album tend to suffer a bit from being overburdened by too much going on at once. 

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