Some people think too much. When these people happen to be musicians what often results is excessively calculated and clinical music. Autistic Daughters’ album Jealousy and Diamond falls prey to this, it is simply too self aware for its own good.
The album opens with what happens to be its strongest track “A Boxful of Birds,” which begins in a slow brooding manner, much like every other song on the album. After three and half minutes of this, however, the song explodes into the album’s hardest section fitted with distorted guitars and handclaps. From here Jealousy and Diamond becomes somewhat boring, exemplified best in the over eleven minute long “Florence Crown, Last Replay” which drones on and on without ever really going anywhere. The track does contain some interesting sonic experimentation, but not nearly enough to justify its length.
The album as a whole isn’t particularly bad, Autistic Daughters certainly have some interesting ideas, such as turning Ray Davies’ “Rainy Day in June” into a slow atmospheric art-rock song, but the whole thing sounds overly ponderous.
Instead of sounding like the experimental innovators they strive to be on Jealousy and Diamond Autistic Daughters sound more like a band who is trying far too hard to do something new.