“Easy Victim, Charitable Deceptions” by W. C. Lindsay

April 15. 2014 | By Nori Bell-Bhuiyan

wc lindsay cover

W.C. Lindsay
Easy Victims, Charitable Depictions
[Big Footprints]

Philadelphia three-piece outfit W.C. Lindsay tout themselves as “the Beastie Boys watching The Breakfast Club at Warped Tour” and their sophomore full-length record, Easy Victims, Charitable Depictions, delivers an alternately chilled and lively mash-up of electro-pop, punk-rock and a healthy helping of hip-hop.

W.C. Lindsay finds a weird (in a good way) balance in his music…he makes electronic music that sounds, well, acoustic. Not literally, but it has that kind of sense to it. A kind of indie pop carefree happy-go-lucky bounce complete with simple, but relatable lyrics, like those of bubbly highlight “Kelsey” and hip-hop infused “Kids These Days.” On the other hand, heavier more solemn tracks like the album opener “Finally Learning The Language” tap into the punk drum-and-bass tones of Lindsay’s influences and guitar-led love song “Slowly, So Sweet” takes a nostalgic stroll into chilled rock ‘n roll territory. The again – on another other hand – tunes like “Little Ghost” and glitch-y computerized “Hard Youth, Hardly You” have a much more typical electro sound.

The blended approach to making an album means that, for some, it could be perfectly easy to love half this album and be utterly ambivalent (or even actively dislike) other parts of it. Certainly a few tracks stand out more than others – in the end it’s the weighty, rolling single “Hum & Roar” that wins me over with its melodic and echoing plucked guitar.

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