Rating: 6.3
The Go Find is a characteristic melodic indie band of the latter half of the Ought Decade, drawing on the twee pop and lovable aching of bands like Death Cab for Cutie. However, this solo project is from the other side of the Atlantic in the heart of Belgium. Dieter Sermeus incorporates jangling guitar arpeggios with plenty of digitization and somber lyrics. He has a penchant for thick synthetic bass and mid-tempo marches which glaze over the production in a viscosity that gives weight, but never glowers. Although most of Stars on the Wall is familiar, there’s plenty of genuine sweetness to appeal to college rockers and starry-eyed dreamers alike.
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Tempo-wise, Stars on the Wall plays like a funeral procession. Even the brightest arpeggios seem cloaked in a clouding shroud of atmosphere that prevents them from ever singing out. For the most part it is the omnipresent low-end thump that punctuates Sermeus’ work. On “Everything Is Low,” the song lives up to its name. There is hardly anything that rises out of a mid-range octave, except for the voice which sounds reminiscent of Billy Corgan’s from Adore-era Pumpkins. “Adrenaline” pumps fuzzy bass and ambient feedback effects through Sermeus’ anthemic chorus vocals to create a building wave of sound. There’s a weighty air to it all, as if Sermeus was singing over a soundtrack to a neon apocalypse or lonely stint on the moon.
“25 Years” is a spot-on match for pretty much anything off of Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism with fewer guitars and more bass. The introspective backward glance of the lyrics can pull forth even the most repressed moment of a sad and longing past. Along those lines, “New Year” is uncomfortably close to the Washington quartet’s song of a similar name, though with a more subdued tone. The track demonstrates one asset of The Go Find, namely Sermeus’ winsome tenor and introspective lyrics. Unfortunately, this asset is also what makes The Go Find sound a little too familiar in the current climate of melodic indie pop.
“Monday Morning” could be placed on top of Led Zeppelin’s “That’s the Way” and it would fit like a square peg in a square hole. The upbeat, airy fingerpicking matches Jimmy Page’s rolling road visions from the latter part of Zep’s career. This song demonstrates the other side of Sermeus’ sonic approach: plaintive acoustic guitar chirps. There is a pretty steady mix of these lighter, more earthy songs with the throbbing percussiveness of tracks like “Ice Cold Ice.”
Stars On The Wall is a dreamy lullaby of songs that are familiar and homogenous, but never monotonous. Sermeus injects enough subdued emotion into his work to add up to something worth checking out.
-Matt Wendus