Drink Up Buttercup- Born and Thrown on a Hook

Talking to Bassist Ben Money before seeing the band live, he said that Drink Up Buttercup uses lots of keys and bass during their live performance. That is definitely true, but what shocked me when they played was the vocal range of lead singer Jim Harvey. He reminds me somewhat of Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria. During the show, the band played almost every track off Born and Thrown on a Hook, the band’s debut album on Yep Rock Records released in March.

Now as good as the band was live (I told Money after he came off stage that the band was “different” but in a good way), the question would be if the transition from live to CD would be seamless. Fortunately, the album versions of most of the songs are defiantly deeper then they seemed when seeing them in person. The album begins with “Seasickness Pills” which shows off the bands roots in psychedelic rock. It starts out as a rock song and turns into dueling vocals by Harvey and Money near the end with music in the background reminding me of the ambient sounds of Pink Floyd at times.

The vocals as mentioned were great from a technical standpoint, the guys can really hit the high notes. To me though, the rest of the music, while good, was not great. Listening to the album a few times though, you can definitely tell that this was the band’s debut. The bass work by Money was average, no new ground being broken there. The oddest thing about this band is the background noises; I am not sure what to make of them. They really get creative there, as in concert they used everything from normal drums to tambourines to xylophones. As interesting as that is, it’s almost like they were over-doing it with Mike Cammarata pretty much spending the entire album/concert making almost to many sounds in the background. It detracted from the music. Still, for a debut it was good, and this band could have a bright future ahead of them.

Grade- B-