LA has been spoiling us lately: Bleached, Deap Valley and Warpaint are just a few of the bands that have been releasing stellar new material. These bands, like so many other musicians, use the fragments of past relationships as a springboard for putting chords and words on record. They all deliver their seething rebukes with the grittiness and determination necessary to convincingly carry songs about heartbreak and infatuation. In really lazy terms, all of these emotive songs are born from the same place, and they either need to be screaming their importance at you or gently coaxing you in to prove they're worth your time.
This is what LA trio Vow are trying to do on Kind Eyes, but any attempts at attention-grabbing valour devolve into a whimper. On opener "Naive Love" frontwoman Julia Blake opines, "Leave me like you always do/ One day I won't come back to you" with about as much conviction as someone enquiring about their electricity bill, while "October" is something of a duet that features Nick Camacho of California's New Manners. "October" tries to sound dark and sultry, with little shocks of 80s-affected electric guitar thrown in to up the ante, but ultimately this track ends up sounding as exciting as reminding your grandmother to take her blood pressure tablets. This attempt at subtlety instead jumps headfirst into irrelevance, being so lo-fi as to become invisible.
Prior to the delicate indie leanings of their debut, Vow flirted with an industrial, post-punk sound that gorged on morose synths and dominated the entirety of 2014's Make Me Yours EP. This dark undercurrent gave the band's sound the panache it needed to stand out, but without the weighty post punk simmering in the background it seems like Vow have lost something of their charming edge.
Kind Eyes really tries to be convincing, and the shoe gaze indebted pomp of "Lowest" has promising vibrancy, with the looping guitar backing creating a glittering backdrop to this tale of unenduring love. The recruitment of Touché Amoré guitarist Nick Steinhardt adds a nuanced layer to proceedings, with Steinhardt's scuzzy guitar playing and Andrew Thomas' metallic drumming offering a highpoint on "Withdraw", but Blake's vocals simply sink beneath the waves of the music. Only when you've bounded through more than three-quarters of the album are you rewarded, where "Over and Over" shows Blake's ability to command and drive a song without getting lost in the instrumentation. There's a propulsive bassline that melds effortlessly with the bouncy guitar-that-sounds-like-a-synth, and shows the cohesive display that Kind Eyes otherwise desperately lacks.
For a debut Kind Eyes is understandably tame, but this would be less frustrating if there weren't so many points on this album where a song gains momentum and then just falters. It's like a souped-up version of The xx but without the quiet determination that implores you to take notice. It's clear that Vow are trying to convey a definitive sound but it's unclear what direction they're actually trying to go in. Moody indie? Thoughtful lo-fi? Emo pop? There's a thin line between understatement and making no statement at all, and with Kind Eyes it seems like Vow are edging closer to the latter.
