Ours: Distorted Lullabies : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The debut album from new York's Ours is a grand, melancholy stunner in the tradition of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley. As a singer, Jimmy Gnecco isn't afraid of Buckley-style melodrama, if only because he's got the pipes to pull it off. Whether he's stretching his falsetto into its uppermost register or venting a pitch-perfect primal scream, Gnecco has an operatic voice that could make angels weep. On the opening track, "Fallen Souls," his howl rings like a reveille amid a swirl of acoustic and electric guitar lines. Like Radiohead's Kid A, Distorted Lullabies is often chillingly spooky; the elegiac melodies of "Meet Me in the Tower" and "I'm a Monster" hover like dark clouds. The eeriness is tempered by the religious intensity of "Here Is the Light" and earthy warmth of songs like "Dizzy." Ours never stray far from the album's prevailing misery, but in the course of twelve songs, they do a remarkable job of exploring the nuances of that one emotion.

JENNY ELISCU
(RS 876 - August 30, 2001)