The full-length debut by Arizona alt-rockers
Awake and Alert harks back to the mid-'90s, when a wave of female-led bands traded in a blend of 4AD-style dream pop moodiness and the more assertive, guitar-driven anthems of vintage
U2. The songs tend toward the midtempo and minor key, but they're uniformly melodic, and the best, like the surging "Ready or Not" and the dreamy jangle-shimmer of "Let Autumn Lift Me," are immediately catchy. Maya Peart's dramatic vocals -- think of
the Cranberries'
Dolores O'Riordan minus the trills and at a slightly lower, smokier pitch -- are front and center throughout the album, and they're strong enough to let most listeners overlook the fact that most of the lyrics are vaguely poetic enough to be basically meaningless. One major exception comes with the album's strongest song, the clear-minded "Starry-Eyed Visions," an assertive, positive lyric married to the album's most memorable tune and spirited performance. An album's worth of songs at that high level of quality would be hard to beat, but
Devil in a Lambskin Suit suffers a bit from the usual travails of the debut album: unimaginative arrangements that make the songs sound a bit more samey than they really are, a certain tendency to remind listeners of earlier, similar bands, that sort of thing. There is definite potential here, however. ~ Stewart Mason