Tennessee's The Features are prepping Some Kind of Album.
There are some voices that sound like they couldn't do anything but head a rock band. You couldn't imagine them going, say, “Any available cashier to the front please” or “Hey, you dropped your iPhone.” These voices are usually the kinds of voices that really should not actually start rock groups, but every so often one or two slips through that doesn't sound like a cover band.
The Features sound remarkably familiar for a band that isn't even signed at the moment, but its influences are a well-mixed cornmash of southern rock with some indie awareness tossed in. The lead singer's drawl is right out of AC/DC, but we can forgive that on a new track like “All I Ask,” which has odd and nice echoes of The Mars Volta amid some questionable synth-brass bits.
A more straigh-ahead rock tune is here in “The Drawing Board,” which is a bit of a hoe-down you'd rather not participate in. It's fun, fun like a bar where your shoes stick to the floor.
It's not quite Dark Meat, but there's something here worth holding on to, which makes me hope the new album Some Kind of Salvation is actually going to come out when they say it's going to come out (some time in October).
