Record Review: Fascination 127

Fascination 127
Twisted Steel With Sex Appeal
(self-released)

Presented as an "interesting side note" in the bio of Austin, TX rock quintet Fascination 127 is the fact that the band's lead singer, the gravelly-voiced (think of a cross between Jawbreaker/Jets to Brazil's Blake Schwarzenbach and Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven's David Lowery) Bryan Joseph Jamail, was a personal friend and and industry-understudy to U2's Bono in the mid-eighties. Unfortunately for us, however, Sir Bono apparently gave no instruction to Jamail on the art of being a proper frontman.

Not that the album is all bad - minus the intensely cheesy and out-of-place sounding synthesizer bleeps and some general over-production (go figure - the same guys also churned out garbage by the likes of Hoobastank and Alien Ant Farm), the band delivers a solid-enough brand of American rock music. But Jamail's endless stream of bad singing and lyrical cliches quickly bog down the proceedings. During most of the band's quieter moments, Jamail sort-of "croon-speaks," a singing technique as well left unexplained as it is unheard. And it gets worse when the band gets loud - the strain heard in his ragged voice is almost palpable. Gosh, and then there are the actual words. On "Wishing Well," he drops this Four Aces/Sinatra lift on us: "Three coins in a fountain, three tries, you fail. Take your mission to the mountain, place your dreams in a wishing well." Wow, thanks man. I almost get it.

At this point, it should come as no surprise that the album's highlight, the one song on with real, emotive lyrics and a pure-pop hook, wasn't written by the band at all, but rather, the British new-wave group the Vapors, who scored a big eighties hit with "Turning Japanese." The anthemic "Letter From Hiro" is everything the style-over-substance Fascination 127 isn't - accessible, earnest, likable.

Grade: D

Fascination 127 - "Letter From Hiro" - MP3