一聽音樂網

Rogue Wave’s past decade has been defined by two reputations that seem unrelated on the surface. The first is that they excel at a kind of jangly, chiming, and softly anthemic iteration of indie rock that made a lot of television music supervisors’ jobs easier in the mid-2000s. The other is that the Oakland band has incredibly shitty luck. Rogue Wave does everything earnestly, and in the last couple of years, they’ve tried in earnest to shed these reputations. And they’ve not found much success. On "Chicago x 12," a single from 2007's Asleep at Heaven's Gate, Zach Rogue expressed the dissonance between his band's critical acclaim and their demoralizing tours with one heartbreaking line: "it don't matter/cause no one comes out to see us." More pointedly, 2010’s Permalight was a slick dance-pop rebranding, an admirable strategy that unfortunately played to none of the band's strengths and created no new ones. Newly signed to Vagrant Records, Nightingale Floors arrives with Rogue Wave bearing acceptance of who they are: they’ve made a good record of jangly, chiming, and softly anthemic indie rock. And in 2013, that makes it a record with exceptionally poor timing.