With little more
than a few well-placed guitars to wrap his silver lyrics around, Torben
Floor's Carey Ott carves an impressive array of mood pieces in the
CD Live Music in the Apartment. While
thoughts of whimpering poetry rise, they are quickly dispelled in
a flood of arching melodies, earnest delivery and minimal but sophisticated
arrangements. While the opened, "Sunk Inside a Drowning Head," conjures
an acoustic Radiohead, the disc explores a rockin' mix of sounds somewhere
between Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, and America. Yet one of their
most interesting songs, "Wrong Directions," sounds like none of these,
providing evidence that Torben Floor is more than a sum of its influences.
Their voices are covered in echo and the hollow irony they submit
often plays a key role in convincing you of their experience and wisdom.
The bass and guitar of Chris Ott and John Moony keep things tight
and interesting while the last two tracks of the disc completely kick
out the jams, finally giving Doug Sale something productive to do;
leaving the writing intact despite the blitzkrieg onslaught of fury
and feedback. -Maximum Ink
The first portion
of this album (Live Music In The Apartment/Waterdog
Records) was recorded on a 4-track. These recordings capture the essence
of this young quartet and possibly even present their music in a better
light than the studio tracks. The band is song-centered and has a
naked strength like you might find on a Brian Wilson lost studio tape.
"Storms of Loss" has a quiet power that ensures this is a group to
keep your eye on. Raw and well-crafted. - Songwriter's Monthly
The same personal
conversations, confrontations, and ruminations that occur in your
everyday apartment take place lyrically on ‘Live Music'... Some of
the guitar work and music hints at latter-day Britpop hitmakers Radiohead
and even Oasis... An hour's worth of focused acoustic pop much in
the tradition of Big Star's more stripped-down, restrained work...despite
drawing upon many influences, the album still retains its original
feel. Credit Carey Ott for mining his influences rather than miming
them. -Chicago Tribune Metromix
Live
Music from the Apartment rolls out of the speakers like a gentle
breeze wafting through an open apartment window on a warm summer night.
-Isthmus
The indie-pop world wants
to spread the good vibes, too. Dig, brothers and sisters. Torben Floor's
Live Music In the Apartment (Waterdog): Jeff Buckly-styled folk-rock
euphoria guaranteed to turn that frown upside down -Magnet
Torben Floor is a young
rock quartet from Chicago that believes in the rock values of the
60's placing the quality of the songs and the emotion of the performance
over image and sounding "contemporary." The group's new
album, Live Music in the Apartment (Waterdog Records), reflects that
philosophy, consisting of heavily acoustic homemade recordings that
make up what they lack in studio gloss with excitement and feeling.
-ASCAP News
The studio cuts suggest
that their real heart is in bands like Afghan Whigs or Poster Children
and not sounding like an indie rock Toad The Wet Sprocket.
-Daily Digital Opinion
dftn@181-4.com
Torben Floor Live Music in the Apartment Waterdog Music
With its debut album "Live Music in the Apartment", Torben Floor shows
definite potential with thoughtful, philosophical lyrics and a raw,
acoustic sound. The quartet of twenty-somethings hails from Ottawa,
Ill., originally and is currently calling Chicago its home base. While
the CD is not a live album, the first fourteen tracks were recorded
in their former apartment with the final two songs being studio tracks.
Lead vocalist Carey Ott's raw, at-times raspy voice creates an eerie
top layer above the mostly acoustic guitar parts. Ott is at his best
on the third track, "Writer's Psalm", when he builds up to quite high
notes. His almost-nasal voice backed by a definite emotional push
reminds me a lot of Radiohead's Thom Yorke. The fourth track, "One
for Me", teeters on the edge of being overly sentimental, but redeems
itself with its self awareness. Ott sings, "I could pass this off
as a silly song but just to be sincere / I will try to come to terms
with this and overcome my fear / I will bear my humble soul to you".
Since it acknowledges its potential for sappiness, I'll give this
one a break and won't attack it as such. The great guitar part by
John Moony also redeems the song musically. Opened with an eerie guitar
melody, "Storms of Loss" is another highlight of the album. The light
vocal texture and delicate guitar part almost give the song the feel
of an updated Simon and Garfunkel sound. Bassist Chris Ott's harmony
vocals add a lot to the well-crafted texture as well. The fourteenth
track is a humorous recording of an answering machine message from
the band's landlord regarding neighbor complaints. "Live music in
the apartment amplified is just not an acceptable situation," he says.
It's kind of a funny, ironic little addition. The studio tracks, "Disillusion"
and "Queue", have heavier bass and percussion layers, so the songs
lose the delicateness present in the other tracks. Nonetheless, they
end the emotional, thoughtful album on a good note. 181.4 Degrees
from the Norm! the Net's freshest music magazine.... http://www.181-4.com
© Copyright 1999 181.4 DftN!
Do two songs make
an album? They do on Torben Floor's debut. On an album of mostly four-track
demos laid down by the band's lead songwriter, only two are full-blown
studio tracks. They demonstrate the band's potential for one day making
a truly great album. "Queue" is symphonic rock, aided by lead singer
Carey Ott's uncanny vocal resemblance to Radiohead's Thom Yorke. Its
fuzz guitar core, mood rock atmosphere and mid-song cacophonies stretch
boundaries in a way that is rare for a typical hometown rock band.
Likewise, "Disillusion" reverberates with a wide scope pulled by Ott's
high and mellow voice. A Chicago Radiohead? We'll see. -Mark
Guarino, Chicago Daily Herald
"If the adjective
‘twee' didn't exist, someone would've had to invent it for Carey Ott's
mournful vocals and jangly acoustic riffs...sweet, sensitive couch-potato
rock." -Chicago Reader
Live
Music In The Apartment (Waterdog) is the debut disc by Torben
Floor, a youthful foursome who combine original and distinguished
songwriting (lead vocalist Carey Ott gets writing credit for 14 of
the disc´s 15 songs, and shares it with his brother on "Wrong Direction")
with accomplished musicianship. Once you hear Carey Ott´s remarkable
voice on the opening track "Sunk Inside A Drowning Head," you are
instantly drawn in, and will probably find it hard to turn away. In
fact, on the tracks that follow (including "Storms Of Loss," "One
For Me," "Above," "The Compromise," "Crush Oubliette," "Queue," and
"Disillusion") Ott held me transfixed. This is a mostly acoustic album,
although the young men of Torben Floor are not afraid to plug in as
they see fit (as they do on "Acceptance" and "Tapestry Immense").
-Gregg Shapiro, Outlines
There's a lot to
be said for achingly personal, introspective guitar pop. Two or three
such numbers give much-needed context to a world fueled by rock...There's
good stuff here.- Namely ‘Sunk Inside a Drowning Head' and ‘No One
Lives.' -The Glass Eye
Live
Music in the Apartment, the latest home-recorded release from
Chicago's Torben Floor, is so stripped- down that even apt comparisons
begin to prove worthless. Crowded House and Jeff Buckley? Sure, but
the disc, more of a frame than a finished product, also sometimes
sounds like Jethro Tull and The Hooters. Fortunately, with clear harmonies
and comfortably conventional songs that somehow skirt maudlin banality,
the band has enough going for it to warrant witnessing this set.
-The Onion
This is not live, it
is life. Torben Floor have been called "the pride of Ottawa, Illinois,"
and rightfully so. Not since the debut of Smashing Pumpkins with their
album Gish has there been an album from Illinois that shows as much
promise as Torben Floor does with Live Music
In The Apartment. This album is brimming with masterful works.
The band's influences, including Jeff Buckley, John Lennon, and, perhaps
most notably Radiohead, are readily apparent throughout the album.
"One for me," a
love song which bears sincere truthfulness of internal feelings, could
have easily been a b-side from Radiohead's The Bends. The next track,
"Storms of Loss," is eerily reminiscent of Mercury Rev, with its dissonant
vocal choruses placed at the ends of various verses, giving it a haunting
feeling of emptiness.
This is music to lose
onself in. The heartfelt singing strikes a chord within the listener.
In the instances when the vocals are backed by brother Chris Ott,
the singing is enough to take the listener to another level, a level
above the static everyday existence to a more wondrous plane. It is
solely on this etheric level that we can find the music to not only
accompany, but complement the emotionality of Ott's lyrics. Moony's
guitar playing displays sheer intensity without being obnoxious. It
is an intensity of feeling, and intensity of love and hate and loss
and redemption, an intensity displayed equally throughout the band.
On the surface, this
album appears to wallow in simplicity - an album of acoustic guitar
and gentle meanderings from a lost soul. But as you can see, by simply
attempting to explain its simplicity, by exploring what is going on
here, one can become entrapped and enthralled by the simple nuances.
This is the test of pure beauty - that of making a thing so simple
that below the surface, if one takes the time to feel, one can find
the true beauty and complexity found therein - a beauty Torben Floor
does not simply possess, but emanates. - Bill Aicher, Editor
music-critic.com
