Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I didn’t know how to feel about the first song on Dreaming Isabelle’s new EP Awake. On one hand, Not Missing You starts with an intoxicating guitar solo making you eager to see what follows and I was sure I was going to love it, but when the vocals enter, the song falters a bit. Somehow, the vocals make you keep listening and inexplicably, you find yourself enjoying what you thought would be a disaster. Somehow, by the time the song is finished you feel like you were just getting into it. The song alternates between a fast and catchy rifts to a much slower pace and it is the instrumentals that keep you listening.

Unfortunately, my excitement waned after listening to the remaining 3 songs on the EP. With only 4 songs, Awake just falls short. That I Am sounds nice, but it stays constant for the majority of the song, waiting until the end of the song to introduce the change in rhythm that you’ve been waiting for 2 minutes into the song. While the change is nice, it simply came too late. Leaving you hanging like the series finale of The Sopranos, I checked my CD player to make sure the CD hadn‘t just stopped.

The opening guitar intro and bass starts Mine off strong and overall the song is pretty good and it is the best on the album. Everything seems right on this song. There is even a guitar solo that truly deserves praise. The background vocals contribute something new and offer a nice airy and somewhat cryptic, yet Gregorian-like harmony. Fortunately for the EP, its 2 best songs are the first and last so while the songs tend to be somewhat messy, they leave with a sense that maybe their next release will have more promise and that all might not be lost.