THE STORM

The biggest problem with Karnataka is that they sound just too darn much like Mostly Autumn. That pretty much sums it up for this album (as well as their others). Over the three Karnataka records it's almost as if you can observe the band morphing into a Mostly Autumn clone, from Rachel Jones' vocals right down to Paul Davies' guitar. That's the bad news.

The good news of course is that Mostly Autumn is a pretty decent band. That makes these guys a highly derivative version of a pretty decent band. Unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily equate to being a good band in their own right.

If there’s one track where these guys show a little bit of originality its “The Journey”, a nearly nine-minute rambling tune that manages to avoid the wailing and decadent screaming guitar forays that Mostly Autumn launches into at every opportunity. This one is a lot more restrained than that, and as a result the track makes for a pretty decent, folksy version of modern progressive music while still keeping some of the commercial appeal the band is clearly seeking to capitalize on as best they can.

I can’t say as much for the rest of the album, which is largely unvaried and largely forgettable. I can’t even find another track to highlight, save possibly for “Love & Affection” thanks to some warm and dominating bass work from Ian Jones. Otherwise I can’t distinguish this enough from any of a series of Mostly Autumn recordings to consider it worth spending much more time on.

I’m going to go ahead and mark this record down for three stars, but really were it not for “The Journey” I’d go with two. So pick this one up if you’re a Heather Findlay or Bryan Josh fan; otherwise I recommend moving along and finding something else. Nothing much to see here.

peace