When digesting an album, it's usually pretty easy to differentiate between those elements that you enjoy and those that you don't, to subconsciously weigh those subjective pros and cons that ultimately tip a listener's scales in one direction or the other, but sometimes a record's greatest strengths are also its greatest weaknesses. Take Cured by the Blur, the latest from Milwaukee psych group Sleepcomesdown, which offers up a sound that's confident and cohesive in a way that's hard not to like, but could ultimately do with a little less consistency and a little more risk-taking.
Heard individually, each of the album's 12 tracks have a lot to recommend them, diving head first into dizzy, strung-out psych bolstered by some punchy, insistent post-punk drums and space-filling effects, but experienced together over the course of 47 minutes, the approach begins to suffer from the law of diminishing returns, robbing standouts like "Float like an Echo" or the title track of some of their impact. It's never dull; thanks mainly to the driving rhythm section, Cured by the Blur always feels like it's going somewhere, but, in the end, the scenery never changes.
It's hard to fault a band for trying to fully explore a sound or create a sustained atmosphere, but a little more dynamics of the sort hinted at by the short, relatively ambient tracks that bookend the album would have let in some much-needed air. If you're the type of person who loads up their iPod and listens on shuffle, then a download is well worth the investment, as there are plenty of standalone gems to be found, but if you prefer to enjoy things straight through, those moments can get obscured by the blur.
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