The Portastylistic: Pomegranates - Everything Is Alive

This creative bunch out of Indiana recorded a fun collection of tunes in an old warehouse, which helped them achieve a sparse, sometimes fuzzy, sometimes sparse sound. According to the charming liner notes, they used some crazy old vintage equipment, including a Fender Bronco bass guitar stripped to its wood grain, a single pickup, and

"strings that probably hadn’t been changed in 10 years." They actually conjure vibes as diverse as Pixies simple alt-pop and British Invasion circa mid-60s and even some of that chiming tube blues guitar tone that’s become so popular lately. Besides using various instruments and sounds to mix things up, multiple vocalists in the band allow for many different shades

Pomegranates Everything is Alive is what most indie rockers try to achieve. The strong vocals are slightly unexpected, due to the fact they're shared between Joey Cook and Isaac Kerns. Sharing lead vocals between two singers is a hard fate, and where one will stand out the other can sometimes falter. However, with Pomegranates, both singers seem to add something different to the same song. Rather than use the standard format of having both singers come in and dialogue between themselves, both take on two different parts of the song. On Whom/Who, when Cook is singing the song has a hint of the Cranberries, and through one brief breakdown, Kerns immerges like a Bob Dylan-esque phoenix, and takes the song to a different place, and for a moment I think I’m listening to a different band completely, which at times isn’t a good thing, but in this case, is wonderful.

After listening to everything up until track four’s, Late Night Television, hearing the opening guitar tease on this song left me in a sense of anticipation, I knew I was in for something good, and I’m happy to report that I wasn’t let down, not even slightly. Cook has this skill that every person dancing and screaming along to music in their room to “The Clash” and “Sex Pistols” wants. On this song, I thought about most indie singers that have come out this year and how they’ve usually fallen short in some way, but Cook and Kerns don’t. Bell Hop goes right along with what I was talking about in Late Night Television. Here, Cook is softer, showing his vocals are still strong regardless of the style. Even though the song is slower, he tackles it with ease, and performs a great song.

Also, I can't speak any higher of the musical accompaniment on this entire album. No matter the style, they perform it flawlessly. Everything Is Alive was recorded and mixed in the span of six days. The majority of the album was tracked live and those elements are very apparent on this album. There were so many different genres covered on this album and they managed this fluidity that never lagged or left me wondering why they chose the arrangement they did. This is generally hard to do if the songs don’t tell a story, and to be honest, I didn’t think there was a band that could do it, but if I couldn’t be proven wrong, I never would’ve listened to album to begin with.

Pomegranates - Everything Is Alive(2008)

So my song of the week is by Pomegranates! it’s called “In The Kitchen”. It is off their debut album, which is called Everything is Alive. Sorry for not paying more attention that night guys. No hard feelings.