Sothen

"Lookatchurself Reggie Measuresworth" CD

self-released

Genre: rock, alternative rock, indie rock

August 2007

For some reason, this entire album reminds me of the song "Everything" by Pacifier (formerly Shihad). We're talking slick, extremely infectious alternative rock that bleeds radio friendliness but knows its way around a good hook. And the trick is, they tend to go for pop more than they do stale radio rock - I'm reminded of some late 90s alt bands like Dishwalla and Everclear. "Wanna Be" is a terrific example of the Sothen at their best - it is a crisp rock song with a wonderfully uplifting melody. Lush "Come Away" and "I Can See" are other solid songs; few duds seem to have made the cut, though I find the second half of the disc to drag a bit compared to the first - "A Coming Down Life" seems to be the lowlight. Lead songwriter Reggie Measuresworth (aka Jonathan Townes) could have mixed things up a bit by adding something different to the band's fairly unoriginal sound, but the solid writing helps buffer the fact that this sticks to unshakeable mainstream values.

mp3s (from sothenband.com): farther, surprise, happy, nerve

75%

Fun Fact: Quite unpleasantly, looking up "sothen" in Google automatically searches for "southern." Yikes.

Matt Shimmer

[Vitals: 15 tracks, 63:12, distributed by CD Baby, released Sep 18 2006]