The Overwhelming Colorfast: Moonlight And Castanets

Retro-lounge packaging has been done to death—Moonlight and Castanets is a long-playing, hi-fi record!—and for the first time, the music of The Overwhelming Colorfast sounds pretty stale, too. The Bay Area band has always emulated the buzzing, rumbling urgency of Husker Du, and has never had any trouble knocking out fleeting but rewarding songs that succeed despite their derivativeness. The problem with Moonlight and Castanets isn't that the band strays from that established formula; it's that, aside from a done-to-death lounge interlude, it never does. Despite some line-up changes, there's honestly no differentiating these tracks from anything on The Overwhelming Colorfast's first two full-lengths. And though those were good albums, it would have been nice to hear any sort of deviation in formula.