Audio By Carbonatix
Nearly half the cuts on Ivory Drive’s debut album sound as though they were ripped from the pages of the Ben Folds Five songbook, only with sax and trumpet added on top. What’s more, Van Wampler’s vocals and piano playing bear an uncanny resemblance to Folds’s. That’s not a bad thing, if you dig Folds. And when members of the Boulder-based quintet take a few detours from the Folds expressway, it can be a bit jarring, as when they try to flex their jazz chops on cuts like “Otherwise Pretend” and “The Factory Machine,” or on the dramatic “Glory Faded,” whose marching snare beat seems a bit out of place on this collection of mostly bouncy tunes.
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