Barcelona, Spain's Aina plays surprisingly solid standup rock songs from a country heretofore known primarily as a hotbed for sparse, gentle indie acts and mournful folksingers. While released in Europe on BCore Disc, the American version is being handled by Superbad Records. The layout is delightfully simple with crisp, transparent paper and bright, colorful photos of each of member of the band. As ethnocentric as it may sound, thankfully all the ten tunes are sung in English, so no worries for the non-bilingual folk. The album is carried by powerful guitar work reminiscent of
Jawbox and vocals similar to
Bob Mould's days in
Sugar (and some of the power poppiness from the latter carries over into the sound, too). Supposedly Aina puts on a rocking good live show and that may be part of the reason for this otherwise unspectacular disc being released. That's not to say that Aina is untalented; rather it's to say that in between the monster guitar chords and the occasional pulling back to delicate melodies, the root of much of this is too similar to
Jawbox,
Burning Airlines, and
Sugar to pique the interest of those not normally inclined to melodic rock. However, fans of the genre should no doubt be pleasantly surprised. ~ Kurt Morris