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Records: Karate's The bed is in the oceanThe CD is in the used bin...Check out sound clips from The bed is in the ocean at Planet of Sound.By Hrishikesh Hirway
to Rudy's on Sat., Nov. 21—a fact made much less exciting after listening to the band's latest release, the bed is in the ocean. It seems that when guitarist Eamonn Vitt left the group, he took Karate's old sound with him. What's left now sounds disappointingly like lead singer Geoff Farina's underwhelming 1998 solo album, Usonian Dream Sequence. Usonian, itself a wanky, reverb-infested bore, sounds like a watered-down version of Eric Clapton's MTV Unplugged album. Thankfully, the bed is in the ocean has a bit more character—there's enough of the old Karate still there to keep it from being a total failure. Barely. This is not Karate—this is Karate Lite, as if the band went through a Phil Collins distiller. The edginess has disappeared from its songwriting, and the whole group sounds sedated. Farina in particular never reaches the kind of vocal intensity he had on Karate's first album, where his awkward, precise annunciation of every word was punctuated by moments of hoarse-throated screaming. His distinctive singing was charming then, but now it comes off as self-conscious, especially with cumbersome lyrics like "I don't hurt when people die; that is unless they worked nights, because I know that I'm going to feel like I'm going to feel no matter how many books I read." Someone must have told Karate what was cool about Karate, and now the band is deliberately trying to reproduce those elements. The result is a weak caricature of what used to be a very good band. In the bed is in the ocean's best moments, Karate regains its depth and rawness, but these moments are rare. The band hits it on the third track, "Diazapam," the only upbeat moment on this otherwise drowsy collection of songs. At its worst moments, the sound falls flat and clichéd. The most pronounced symptom of what ails the bed is in the ocean can be summed up in two painful words: guitar solos. There is a distinct difference between a lead guitar part and a guitar solo, and apparently Farina has lost sight of which one of these is tasteful and which one sucks. I single him out because this kind of crap is found all over Usonian Dream Sequence, and destroys what might otherwise be decent songs. On a related note, I always liked the look of Karate's CDs, but the new one is ugly. Sure enough, Farina is credited with designing it. I wouldn't recommend this album to Karate fans. A lot of people are going to be let down by the bed is in the ocean. But if you want to find out for yourself, I'd wait a few days. The bed is in the ocean—the CD is in the used bin. (Southern)
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