Hopeless Records – 10 Sep 2021
A strong start and finish buoy up the middle.
Sincere Engineer made a big impression with their first record Rhombithian. Great songs with honest, funny, and sarcastic lyrics sung by Deanna Belo, who has turned Sincere Engineer from a solo project into a full band. Can they make the same impression with follow-up Bless My Psyche?
You might think so when you hear the first song “Trust Me.” A powerful song with a kickass chorus and easily one of my favourite songs of the year. This song has everything I like about Sincere Engineer. The aforementioned honesty in the lyrics, the raw voice. Wow! The song transitions seamlessly in the acoustic intro of “Tourniquet” which ends with a surprising instrumental outro which we haven't heard before from Sincere Engineer. That might be side effect of Sincere Engineer being a full-fledged band now. So far so good!
And now we are in the middle section of the album. A few songs into this section I began to worry. They come in and out, and none of them really grab me. What is going on? Why do the vocals sound so tame? Why does “Recluse in the Making” bore me so much? Why does “Gone For So Long” have a guitar lead that sounds like bad-era Weezer? Might this record be a dud?
Thankfully it all comes around strong again with “Dragged Across the Finish Line,” which has that same energy as the opener. The record ends with the acoustic title track “Bless My Psyche,” which is also fine but, compared to the acoustic closer on the first record “Ghost in the Graveyard,” it's a bit pale.
“But Mr. Reviewer,” I hear you wonder, “if you don't like this record why did you play it twenty times in the past week?”
Good question, dear reader. Maybe this record, and especially the middle section, is a grower. So, ask me again in a few weeks. I know for sure that I will still be shouting along with “Trust Me.”
Quirijn's primary focus for TGEFM is on album reviews and band interviews. When he's not writing for the site, he can be found mixing sound at Fiction Studio, mixing up beats for as one part of hip-hop duo Breekpunt, or playing guitar for punk quartet Ink Bomb.