Something many musicians will tell you about playing acoustic is that it’s easy to make it sound nice but a lot more difficult to master. The first words that pop into your head when you listen to Team Dave will be ‘Dashboard’ and ‘Confessional’. And why not; Chris Carrabba has written some very listenable songs in his time. The rub lies in the fact that David Wright, the man behind it all, doesn’t offer anything beyond his influences. To be fair he states himself that his intension with this music is to reach the mixtapes of lovers, and this could easily happen. All the introspection and metaphors are firmly in place for one to relate every word to a situation in their lives. If this kind of obvious appeal is what Team Dave is all about then fair enough, but at that level the music is never going to stand out on its own merit.
Take for example track two’s line; “red wine spilled across the table like the blood that flowed from his wrists”. It’s so generically teen-romantic that if it wasn’t expressed with sincerity one would assume it was pastiche. The lyrics in general are very open and honest which is a good attribute, but sometimes over-the-top (there are proclamations of marriage to two separate girls in the course of the demo).
There’s a definite punk influence there with the pace of the songs, which is cool. The music doesn’t fart around, and so while it might be derivative it isn’t pretentious. But when compared to the likes of Nathaniel Green who inject so much depth and flavour into their sound then it doesn’t compete. One for whole-hearted romantics only.
www.myspace.com/teamdave
Alex