FLY PAN AM

Post Rock has never been my favorite genre of music, even though I do enjoy an occasional album from the genre every now and again. While I am certainly no expert of the genre, it seems to me that far too many of the bands that play post rock are very clichéd and lacking in innovation. Fly Pan Am's 1999 self-titled debut album proves just that, through a monotonous, uninspired, and repetitive experience.

If you're a fan of post rock, you may find more enjoyment from this album then I do, so I will day that from the start. This album has Roger Tellier-Craig of Godspeed You! Black Emperor on guitar, so if you consider yourself to be a fan of his you might want to check this out. For the casual post rock listener, such as myself, I really can't recommend this album to you at all. I have a really hard time sitting through all 60 minutes of this album. Especially when you put into consideration that you could easily cut off 25 minutes of useless repetition from this album. All in all, I get really frustrated when I listen to this album! There are some good ideas, but muddy production qualities and painfully boring compositions really destroy my overall listening experience.

This one hour album consists of only five songs, which range from a comfortable nine and a half minutes, all the way to almost eighteen minutes! Almost all of these songs could have easily been trimmed down in terms of length, and that is my biggest complaint with Fly Pan Am. Especially the near 18-minute track. The entire song is essentially based on two notes, which can obviously get repetitive after a short amount of time. And then when you add annoying, headache-inducing sound effects on top of that, it makes for a really bad way to spend such a vast amount of time. Unfortunately, none of the other four tracks are any more interesting.

As if the boring compositions weren't bad enough, the production qualities are really poor as well. It sounds very low budget, and the lead electric guitar sounds can occasionally get very annoying. The production is a minor complaint in the big picture, however. This album has far larger flaws than some mixing issues.

The musicianship is pretty poor as well. A lot of the playing comes across as sloppy and uninspired. The bass playing of J.S. Truchy is nearly inaudible, so I can't comment on him too much. The guitar playing is especially sloppy, and could have been much better. The drumming from Felix Morel is pretty boring, to be completely honest. He does absolutely nothing notable through the entire coarse of this album.

Conclusion:

Fly Pan Am is a really poor debut from this band, and I'm afraid I can't even recommend this to any post rock fans unless you're a die-hard Godspeed You! Black Emperor collector. I don't give out 1 star ratings often, but I'm afraid that is what I must give this album. I've only listened to this album from beginning to end a handful of times, and I'm afraid I won't ever hear it again.

1 star.

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