Visionstain -- Fouronseven
Fouronseven
Silverdish Records, 1995
If the pictures grazing the lunch box emblazoned on the sleeve of this 7" are any indication, Visionstain are probably pretty nice people. I mean, they're smiling and hamming it up for the photographer, looking like they're having fun and not taking themselves too, too seriously. And, really, I tend to pull for groups of people for whom making music seems to be more about enjoying oneself than taking a businesslike or pretentious approach to artistic creation. That said, Visionstain are an unremarkable three-piece outfit hailing from the unremarkable de-industrialized city of Rochester, New York and Fouronseven is an unremarkable EP showcasing this unremarkable band's unremarkable sound.
Basically, Fouronseven sounds like the sort of thing a for-fun band would put together on a cassette for some of their friends. I mean, Visionstain isn't awful, but I'm puzzled that someone at a record label thought highly enough of these four songs to say, "Hey, let's do a rekkid, kids!"
Piling alternatingly soft, melodic female vocals and gruffer male vocals onto a bed of distortion-heavy, punkish alt-rock, Visionstain is certainly listenable, but their sound on Fouronseven is quite dated. The early-to-mid nineties were rife with bands that played faster (think Dirty-era Sonic Youth), feedback-heavy alt-rock. Adding a slightly "punker" edge to that generic sound on this disk, though, does very little to make Visionstain stand out from the pack.
Sobriquet Grade: 68 (D+).
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