Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle [Audio CD] Space Needle

How's this for irony? Low-fi indie rock, inspired by punk's do-it-yourself aesthetic, takes postrock conceptualism to a level of joyless meandering that hearkens back to the darkest days of '70s art rock, the very music punk sought to destroy. Welcome to Space Needle. On their 1995 debut, Voyager, the Long Island-based duo came out of nowhere and created a surprisingly, if not completely, successful four-track recording that put a dream-pop face on percolating analog synths and guitar noise. With their new The Moray Eels Eat the Space Needle, the newly expanded three-piece gets a chance to stretch out in a professional studio, and it quickly becomes apparent how limited and uninteresting Space Needle really are. Before you even hear the music, it's clear The Moray Eels treads on dangerous territory. The cover art rehashes the dreamscapes of early Yes albums, an ominous foreshadowing of the music to come. Perhaps the only thing worse than Yes's prog rock noodling is Space Needle's noodling without the musical chops to back it up. Minutes go by on the album where we hear nothing but rudimentary guitar picking repeated over atmospherics, without building or developing at all ("Bladewash" is almost 12 minutes of tedium). The Moray Eels is best when it aims lowest: "Love Left Us Strangers" is a '70s-style organ ballad that's catchy and soulful in a suburban, hokey way. "Never Lonely Again" is pleasingly melodic as well, somewhere between Bread and the Velvet Underground. The addition of electric violin adds new colors to two of the tracks, but it's never anything that the Dirty Three haven't done better. --Roni Sarig