Dimestore Dandelion – Oil and Water / 2006 Self / 5 Tracks / Reviewed 07 November 2006

Dimestore Dandelion plays a brand of back and forth type of jam meets reggae rock that will undoubtedly be the big thing on campus for the next few years. Like guitarist Tony Pica, the style is readily accessible to all but without any real hook to distinguish the tracks on this EP from the rest of the music on the market.

The track is professionally mixed, but there is little here that is shining above the horizon created by the band. “Daisy Chained” is thus a track that goes on for about a minute too long. I know that there are other tracks in this same musical style that can be considerably longer (O.A.R.’s “That Was A Crazy Game of Poker” tops out at longer than 10 minutes), but there just is not the right mix of thing spresent in this track to click. The second track is “Busy Bee”, and this track has a much more sedate sound that “Daisy Chained”. The vocals in this track align themselves much more to a Paul Newman type of approach than anything out of the jam band approach, and they work well with their slightly whiney sound in the more morose instrumentation on the track. The slow tempo of “Oil and Water” (both the track and the entirety of the disc) will play to the likes of a specific group in society. I do not know how generalizable the music present on this EP will be.

I see Dimestore Dandelion as a band that has a lot of commonalities with an act like the North Misssissippi All-Stars. This disc does have a high replay value to it, so I would have to suggest that this album gets slapped into the CD changer either at home or in the car. The blend of funk, soul, and laid back reggae on “Oil and Water” will make fans of Phish and the Grateful Dead happy; I can’t foresee this album burning up the charts, but sales should be brisk owing a lot to the band’s talent as well as the approachability of their style. I would like to see if Dimestore Dandelion could extend their compositions to the entirety of an album. I guess individuals will just have to pick up their upcoming full-length album and see if the band is able to extend their sound to those lines. I think they can do it.

Top Track: x2

Rating: 5.6/10

[JMcQ]