Empty Frame (Legend). 13 tracks
They Think We Are Eskimos, Empty Frame’s first album, shows the band has promise. On the Greek indie circuit since 2005, they’ve built up a small but loyal following by playing clubs and opening the odd concert for more established Greek and foreign headliners. Like all new bands, they claim various influences, ranging from the Beatles and Nick Cave to Queens of the Stone Age and Porcupine Tree. This is evident in this album which seems to have been compiled from tracks that almost mimic one of their favorite bands. The result comes dangerously close to being a pastiche of styles that cannot be explained away as diversity. Indeed, you spend the first couple of minutes listening to somgs like “Looking Up” and “The Caravan” trying to figure out which song or band you hear behind each track. Yet the album doesn’t seem like a collection of ersatz covers as even while emulating different sounds Empty Frame also, somehow, manages to make them their own. The fact that they can incorporate such a range of styles (you can hear Yes lurking beneath “Eternity” and can almost see the credits to Kill Bill rolling to the strains of “No Borders) yet craft original songs bodes well for their future. What one expects–and looks forward to–from their second album is to hear how they’ve melded all this into a sound that is genuinely theirs.