At first, Smith Westerns seemed easy to peg: Chicago prep school teens play garage rock with a glam-rock slant. With 2011’s excellent Dye It Blonde, the group—singer/guitarist Cullen Omari, bass-playing brother Cameron and lead guitarist Max Kakacek (and a rotating cast of drummers)—began to step away from the garage-rock template. But once you’re pegged, you’re pegged, and Smith Westerns still got called a garage-rock band. That should change with Soft Will (Mom + Pop), the band’s third album. Its sunny disposition favors mid-tempo tunes and gentle singing, and it’s loaded with breezy melodies, drenched in reverb and laced with echoes of several eras of Britpop. Smith Westerns will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com. Read our brand new feature on them.
Cullen: Feel that most people disregard the last two movies of the Matrix trilogy as unwatchable, however, I find Matrix Reloaded as the standout of the bunch. From a stylistic standpoint it takes the cyber goth aesthetic and weaves it with these futuristic medieval settings. The two albino twins and the Merovingian make this movie. The scene where Neo fights the henchmen in the Merovingian’s house is classic. The marble statues of Roman gods and the medieval tapestries help to make one of the coolest sets ever.
Video after the jump.
