3 out of 5

Label: Adult Fantasy Records

Produced by: Matt Buscher (recorded by)

Nearly 20 years after the fact, rock duo C-Average add a shtick, add two members, and essentially ditch a K.I.S.S. approach that made their first two outings memorable entries in the stoner rock scene. …Which suggests that III isn’t memorable, and, unfortunately… that’s mostly the case. Despite the expanded roster, and an increased song runtime – instead of one-offs hitting the 6+ minute mark, now our entire album is 6 tracks – III’s sound oddly feels scaled back. It’s less immediate; more scared to either barrel ahead or wander. On the plus side, it’s a very polished and mindful outing, with each entry definitely sounding fully realized. However, given that our new singer Olivia Love really only gets to stretch her pipes on two songs, it doesn’t feel like she gets to be a part of the act – more like a guest star – and new bassist John Boyce similarly doesn’t necessarily add new dimensions to the stoner rock sound (which is now absent its punky leanings; an aggression that awesomely amped up the prior releases and amped up the build-up of longer tracks); a space-faring theme is… kinda there and kinda not; it’s all kind of really talented people play acting, and because it still includes the same two guitarists and drummer as before (Jon Merithew, Brad Balsley), we again call it C-Average, but I wonder if the project could’ve had more wings under a new identity.

Hopefully, despite all my negativity, you can see that most of my criticisms are hooked into a comparison to albums the band released nearly two decades earlier. Obviously things will have changed since then, but it’s an unfortunate eventuality of not only the anticipation due to the recording gap, but also… it’s what we do: compare a band’s efforts to their other ones.

Otherwise, III is a totally fun set. The synthy opening and Man… Or Astroman-ish samples add a bit of quirk, and the choice of covers – Carl Orff and Bikini Kill – are fun to be done up in stoner rock style. But without awareness of the group’s longstanding history, these compositions are also fairly shallow; it sounds like some skilled folks getting their feet wet for a stronger followup outing.