She Wants Revenge, New Album Release
05-05-2011
- by Dante Alexander, Staff Mumbler
Fresh off the roster at Coachella, alternative/electronic band She Wants Revenge is due to release their new album, Valley Heart.

On the 22nd of April, in a Hollywood venue so small that most of us could compare it with our living room, the alternative-rock / electronic duo that is She Wants Revenge played a secret show to celebrate the album release of Tenderbox, a band that they are friends with. Similarly, She Wants Revenge was just preparing to put out their new album, Valley Heart at around the same time.

As for the show itself, it was "secret" in the sense that tickets only went on sale the day before and presented you with the perilous task of tracking down the right website (and while that might not sound like much, it was definitely enough to make someone want to rip out fistfuls of their own hair in frustration). I was lucky enough to attend this show, which had me quite impressed at first due to the fact that the band (who had played venues so large that you'd have to squint to see them) was literally five feet in front of me. So I suppose that you'd have to give them credit for being good to their fans in that sense, even if their new music and their performance ended up being terrible.

....but that's just the thing..

Now, everyone bitches about their favorite bands not staying true to their original sound; it can be very cliche, but unfortunately it can often be true. This day, their performance seemed to mirror the sound of their new music very well- boring and lifeless. Singer Justin Warfield simply stood like a statue the whole time, though occasionally pausing to bitch about whatever the audience was doing. Perhaps it could have simply been a bad performance, but it very much gave the impression that the band was losing all of the energy that it had years ago.

As for the music itself, where their songs had once been dark and captivating, with beats and rhythms that could infect any listener, they now appear to have moved in the direction of the more typical. For those of you who remember their earlier hits such as "These Things" and "Tear you Apart," the song attached to this article will definitely surprise you, and don't think that means in a good way.

But bands don't stay the same. As much as we all want to hate on artists that would try new things, the alternative could actually be worse; if a band just put out the same album over and over again, their name would be AC/DC... and no one would care anymore.

And indeed the sound of Valley Heart isn't as bad as it may seem I've made it out to be. While the song posted here may make me cringe every time I think about it, to judge a band on a single song is ridiculous. On the other side of the spectrum they have "Take the World," an amazing song that still manages to capture the dark rhythms of their former self while still being fresh in comparison, and then their song "Up in Flames," should be regarded as at least passably good by long time fans. Anyone who didn't forget about this band after their first album can only hope that they do more in the direction of "Take the World" and, on future albums, avoid writing songs in the "Must be the One" direction like the plague.

Their newest album, Valley Heart, is due to be released May 24, 2011, and thank God our iPod's come with a button to skip songs, because we're going to need it to deal with "Must be the One."