Record Review: Rogue Wave - "Asleep At Heaven's Gate"

Rating: 5.9 / 10.0

I was alarmed when I heard that Rogue Wave had signed to Brushfire Records. I didn’t like the idea of these modern lo-fi sophisticates being pre-packaged and made ready for the Jack Johnson-loving masses. It’s not that I mind Jack Johnson’s sound, but the link between it and that of these bay area indie mainstays seemed to me tenuous at best. Needless to say, I was pretty concerned when I first spun this record. I naively expected this record to sound like Jack Johnson: in my nightmares, Zach Rogue tried to huskily whisper four notes over five chords (a formula which I think only Jack Johnson can even approach pulling off). There would be no more reverb-soaked electric guitars, only beachy, O.C.-ready acoustic numbers. Such thoughts haunted me. I hated what I thought was coming.

Imagine my shock, then, when I pressed play and heard the exalted, furious pound of the remarkable “Harmonium”, much less the album that followed. This record is certainly not one for a beach trip. Quite the opposite, it is Rogue Wave’s darkest, most complex effort to date. At their best, the songs are heavy with struggle, weighted down by a troubled history, but trying desperately to stay positive, to see a light at the end of the tunnel. As the record progresses, however, Rogue Wave sounds more tired than tortured, resulting in a sloppy, lazy, unsatisfying last third capped off by the atrocious closer, “Cheaper Than Therapy”, with all the kitsch and cuteness of Regina Spektor’s most saccharine work. God save us.

In the end, I don’t think Rogue Wave was ready for a release like this. It is not evidence that they are incapable of producing a record with this kind of meaning. I think there is evidence that they might very well be just that. But what this album does prove is that they are far from their musical maturity. There are flashes of brilliance here (see “Harmonium”, “Lake Michigan”, and “Christians In Black”), a brilliance that their previous two records did not even hint at. But this is a patchy, inconsistent effort that would have benefitted from a few songs being relegated to the cutting room floor.


-PTC