Lana Avacada

The Warehouse (2009)

Brian Shultz

Lana Avacada do a type of playful, '90s (and R&B, apparently)-influenced emo that would be a perfect fit over at the budding roster of Count Your Lucky Stars.

The Warehouse is a full-length debut making notable use of a dual vocal approach -- one guy who's got the overly earnest thing without being too cutesy and another dude who shouts in a would-be-chaotic-but-is-instead restrained gruff. Float that atop an ever-changing set of mathy, Minus the Bear-circa-Highly Refined Pirates-or-Maps & Atlases-esque riffs and you've got a pretty unique base to play with.

Let's hold up for a second -- it maybe wouldn't be completely accurate calling this emo as the band sometime show a sense of humor more in tune with a pop-punk band. "But Your Naked Pictures" has plenty of awkward talk about being naked on the internet; they do a cover of the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow," and true to the song even throw in the Auto-Tuned vocal melody at the beginning -- it's pretty funny, and the band totally make the song their own with that chorus.

Another interesting moment comes with "Interlude," which seriously sounds just like Moss Icon's narrative beat poetry era. It's quite a distinct take amid a lot of other more shouty, casually noodly guitar-emo jams. Meanwhile, "Real Talk" (hey R Kelly ref) makes some of the album's best use of the shouty gruff vocals, and "So Useless This Roundabout Is" has one of the stronger attempts at a real hook (and an almost soaring vocal melody from the other guy), since there's, admittedly, a bit of a shortage on this album of them.

A lot of the times the guitars seem noodly and intricate just for the sake of being so, though, distracting from the strengths of something like "Interlude II," which would be a fantastically atmospheric, Person L-ish drifter for its first half if those guitars weren't so perturbing.

The Warehouse also feels a little longer than it actually is (37 minutes plus a radio edit of the title track [weird]), and maybe that's due to a lack of really engaging moments. That being said, this is a solid and very interesting album and offers plenty for the band to work on and develop into something more powerful.

STREAM
The Warehouse
Mantles
Boom Boom Pow (Black Eyed Peas)