Boxby Anonymous

Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings

April 26, 2006: "Box" is a fantastic album. The members of mellowdrone cite many influences, from Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti to metal giants Pantera, to Roy Orbison and various classical composers. Yet their music maintains an overarching aesthetic entirely their own: beautiful melodies, inventive harmonic landscapes, and darkly humorous/unexpected lyrics delivered in a voice alternatively hushed & intimate and full of bravado. The tracks on "Box" move seamlessly from the opening grandeur of “c’mon try a little bit”, to the ready for prime-time power pop of “oh my”, and the haunting beauty of “fashionably uninvited”, to the sensual funk of “orange marmalade”, the Andean romp of “bone marrow”, and the final harrowing lullaby “limb to limb”. Mellowdrone is essentially the brainchild of singer/songwriter Jonathan Bates. Bates was born in Venezuela, raised there and in Miami before attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston as a guitar scholarship student. He left Berklee shy of graduation, but learned something important there: “I quickly realized at Berklee that I was technically proficient on guitar, but I didn’t know anything about music,” he recalls. “I’d spent so much time worshipping the guitar and mastering it as a piece of engineering, that I missed the point – the guitar is the means to the end and the song is the end. It sounds so elementary, but it was lost on me until I was 20 because I was practicing so much. When I truly discovered music, the world opened up to me.” Bates moved from Boston to Los Angeles, where he made his own home recordings, sold them on his website, and started garnering a following playing open mics and small clubs. He added bandmates along the way, most notably guitarist Tony DeMatteo, who wrote the beautiful "limb to limb". Truly excellent!