By Courtney Schultz

With each listen to Terramara’s third and latest album, “Dust & Fiction,” comes another musical layer to love.  Layering their classic sounds with new musical territories seems to be Terramara’s forte. The strongest layer throughout comes from the clever and catchy lyrics of singer/songwriter Rob Meany, which keep the first two tracks suspended a notch above a very XTC sound.

The third track, “Blue Revolution,” begins a string of songs that highlight the band’s natural talent for harmony and shows their growth in adventurous melodies.  While maintaining a consistent sound, Terramara explores different musical ground  throughout the album, closing it off with “Losing My Mind”- a song that sounds like a jazzy version of something off of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ latest album.

Terramara has a classic, easy to listen to sound with personality. “Dust & Fiction” is piano based and guitar-driven, jazz-rock based and pop-driven. They aren’t about to shock their listeners with anything completely unexpected, but they keep the album lively with a good variety of experimentation. In their first two albums, the band developed a characteristic sound. They used the third to make that sound stronger while dipping it into a mixture of flowing melodies and artistic musical ideas.

It is clear through the music that the band is tight. The five members have matured musically together so that listening to them sounds like musical discourse of melodies and harmonies, bouncing off of one another and smoothing each other out. They are able to take in and experiment with the influences of other bands while remaining secure in something that is uniquely theirs. Rather than becoming set in their ways at the band’s early age, the musical growth seen in “Dust & Fiction” seems to mark the beginning of exciting times for Terramara. If this album is any indication, they will not settle for a band life of monotone music. Instead, they appear ready and eager to explore all the niches of their talent while offering fans a steady stream of good, pop-fueled jazz.

www.terramara.com

Filed under: Music Reviews