It’s always possible to have too much of a good thing. A lot of bands can produce good albums as duos or trios, decent albums with four or five members, and discordant, odd sounding albums with a serious attention span problem with any more than six members. Enter River City Extension, an eight member band from New Jersey. I got my ears and mind ready for eclectic cacophony, a crazy mix of too many instruments that did not know quite how to work together. As it turns out, the same way you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, you shouldn’t judge a band by the number of members. Not only is River City Extension an incredibly tight group of musicians who do in fact know how to give each instrument a fitting place, they do it better than a lot of bands with half the instruments. Feast your ears on this great debut album from a band I hope to see much more from.

Comes out May 11 via XOXO Records

THE UNMISTAKABLE MAN
I’m not a big fan of instrumental tracks on albums, but this song, musically, draws me in with the beautiful duet of cello and horns, and it sounds sort of ominous with the announcement of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the background. It sets up an oddly depressing mood but it perfectly leads in to the next song.

FRIENDS & FAMILY
I love the seamless transition from the previous song, it’s quite well done. The song starts off with just an acoustic guitar and the vocals, which have just the perfect amount of edge to the voice, especially on the louder parts. The drums and horns come in together and the song slightly speeds up, adding an instant build up. The lyrics of this song are amazingly easy to relate to and I know we’ve all been in this state of thought before, or maybe are currently. It’s a pretty fun sounding song about a serious topic and it instantly drew me into the record and made me want more.

SOMETHING SALTY, SOMETHING SWEET
Starts off with a very fun acoustic sound with a light amount of cello before the entire band comes in and keeps the fun going with a great drum beat and horns. This is certainly a standout track, one that will get stuck in your head for at least a few days. This song makes me want to see River City Extension at a house show, I bet it’s just a bunch of fun. I love the end of the song with the multiple vocal layers, it adds a nice element to the mix. The ending cello brings the energy down ever so slightly for the next song.

SOUTH FOR THE WINTER
This song brings about a change of pace, starting with slow acoustic guitar and mellow vocals. The feedback noises create a slight buzz of anticipation, foreshadowing the blast of energy that comes from seemingly out of nowhere. “Sometimes all I want is a job and a god and a wife.” I feel like those lyrics are really sophisticated coming from people in their twenties, and that’s a thought that continues for the entire album. These guys are how old? Really? It feels like they haven’t been playing together long enough to play this well together. After a close listen with headphones I realized that in the beginning there is a faint drumbeat, almost like a heartbeat, which I think is a really nice subtle touch. There’s a point where it quiets back down and for a second I think the song is over until it jumps back into the energetic piece of the song, remaining there until it leaves just the vocals, ending the song with beautiful harmonies.

OUR NEW INTELLIGENCE
This shows off the eight-piece’s ability to be wonderfully cohesive and have a stripped down sound, even with all of those instruments in the mix. Each instrument has its place, nothing is overdone. It starts off with clapping in a beat that will certainly end up stuck in your head, then comes an equally catchy acoustic guitar. The multiple vocals on this song are really special. About halfway through, it gets a bit of a split personality and made me wonder if I had somehow not realized that the song had changed. The middle part of the song sounds like something out of either a pirate movie or saloon scene in an old western. Then it transforms into just piano, vocals and drums before it goes right back to the beginning of the song with twice the intensity.

IF I STILL OWN A BIBLE
I love the lyrics of this song, I just wish I liked the music a bit more. It starts of really slow and takes over a minute to sort of fake a build up that doesn’t happen until the song is almost over, and even then, it’s very short and noisy and fades right back into nothing but the acoustic guitar and feedback noise that doesn’t belong in the song.

ADRIANNE
There’s a big need for energy after the previous track, and it’s definitely found in the loud drum introduction that kicks off the song and the slide guitar and horns that follow. My favorite element of the song is how the vocals show off the edge in his voice, as he yells a bit more than he does in any other song, and that’s a feature that I really love about the vocalist. This song is also a great example of the way they have easily incorporated horns into rock/folk songs, where most songs with horns, the horns seem to intrude. I think my favorite part of the song is the middle where everything is acoustic and the vocals are the most prominent element.

MEXICO
This song is a great example of how River City Extension manage to stick out as something different in a sea of sameness. The horns here certainly create a Latin type of feeling. What I’m guessing is a djembe (type of drum) adds a great layer of sound and adds to the Latin atmosphere. I love the steady rhythm and faster pace of this song.

TOO TIRED TO DRINK
This is another song where the vocals have a lot of edge to them, which I love. It also has some of the best lyrics on the album, presented with just the right amount of angst behind them. Once the very busy intro is over, the verses don’t have much going on. A little thing that bothers me about this song, and mac users beware, that ‘new mail’ sound is IN the song, your computer is not lying about new mail. You have no idea how many times I checked my dock before I realized that it happened at the same parts of the song every time.

HOLY CROSS
This is another song with brilliant lyrics whose music doesn’t allow me to fully love it. The saloon piano sound’s repetition starts to get old really fast. I do like the “ba ba da ba ba”s at the end of the song, and the way that a few vocal layers intertwine. The ending spoken sample makes it end like nothing else on the album and I appreciate that.

TODAY, I FEEL LIKE I’M EVOLVING
“Today I feel like I’m evolving, taking two stairs at a time. Learning to love you and to keep you as a staple in my mind. Well, I never met a woman so afraid she’d never grow out of a girl.” This is the first slow song on the album that pulls its weight as a slow song. It’s got the sentimental sounding lyrics, acoustic guitar, soft snare, cello, banjo, and harmonious gang vocals. It’s a slow song filled with content, not a song lacking content to the point that it becomes slow. Even as a softer song it’s one of the best on the album and one of the songs that stick out on first listen.

LETTER TO LAINIE
Although  don’t like the piano, it sets up a great vocal melody. At this point, do I sound like a broken record when I say I like their lyrics? Sorry, but their lyrics are definitely their strong suit. I normally think banjos sound cheesy, but it sounds amazing in this song, almost like a banjo was invented for “Letter To Lainie.” This is probably the best song for singing along to other than “Today, I Feel Like I’m Evolving.” Some of the elements of this song sound really old timey, like the saloon piano sound and the horns. I’d love to know who their direct influences are, because I have a feeling that they’re all effortlessly incorporated in River City Extension’s own sound.

WAITING IN THE AIRPORT
I wonder why this is the last song on the album…it’s not a very strong ending and the song isn’t memorable to me at all, and after the first listen, I don’t want to listen to it again.

Basically: This album had a lot of potential to be a 5/5 album, but a few of the songs lacked energy but weren’t slow enough to be counted as “slow songs,” so they ended up feeling like something was missing. It’s not that the songs are bad, it’s just that, I guess when you have eight members capable of creating this really big sound and it doesn’t happen, it feels empty. The faster and more energetic songs on this album have a style that I would love to hear more of in the music world today, but, I’ll just wait until River City Extension’s next album because I have a feeling that currently, they’re the best at what they do.

Best track: “Our New Intelligence.”