Eisley: Marvelous Things : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

An alterna-teen Christian brother-and-sisters act from Tyler, Texas, Eisley trill sweetly about magical undersea kingdoms on this EP, the band's major-label debut. The pretty, ever-sighing vocals of siblings Sherri and Stacy DuPree suggest that the band has stripped the fairy-tale imagery out of some Smashing Pumpkins songs but left out all the nastiness that made those post-grunge Nineties hits compelling. "The Winter Song" has a delicate melody, pitch-perfect slo-waft vocals and guitars that sparkle like a microburst of Manic Panic eyelash glitter. Marvelous Things is an accomplished, lush and very pleasant limpid pool of music. It will delight the ten-year-olds in the house and challenge not a soul. The title track -- a vaguely medieval roll of lacy chords and sensitive tambourine-shaking -- is exceptionally winsome and neat. But it's not rock & roll. It's music for Unicorn Barbie.

PAT BLASHILL
(RS 940, January 22, 2004)