• Band / Artist : Brown Shoe – mySpace
• Genre : Ambient
• Sample Track Download : Pop Song
• Buy CD : Band Store
• Buy Digital Download : iTunes
• Rating : 8 out of 10

As soon as this album began to play on my CD player, with the track “The Ship” it reminded me of Pink Floyd’s, Division Bell. That familiarity soon subsides and is replace by a more 80’s/90’s indie rock sound, similar to one of my favorite 90’s bands, the Inspiral Carpets. Although great care has obviously gone into the bands sound and production, you still get that real sense of lo-fi, making the 13 tracks seem almost like live takes. This is sometimes an unwanted distraction, but here it really adds to the flavor of the band and also gives me a good idea of how the band would sound live. I’m sure live gigs are quite an aural feast.

On the bands mySpace page, they pretty much describe their style as indie/ambient. I didn’t quite get the ambient feel from this album. I’m not sure if it’s just this album, but in my minds ear, I can just imagine some cracking ambient mixes of these tracks, easily allowing them to be stretched over a much greater length. Whilst I wouldn’t really consider them ambient, it’s still a very laid back album, which certainly puts you in the right frame of mind to relax.

One of my favorite tracks would have to be “Goodnight Old Man”, not surprising when you hear the Pink Floyd influence surface again. It’s also a very deceptive track, which seems to go on forever, but lasts just a tad under three minutes. “CBC” is the track that rounds off the album and at just over 7 minutes is one of two mammoth tracks. It has that perfect blend of simple melody and an almost rolling wave of repetition, which if you’ve been reading Indie Launchpad for a while, is something I absolutely love, when done right and this is done to perfection.

Conclusion : A great band, bringing a sense of familiarity, but also firmly rooted with a more contemporary vibe.