3 out of 5

Label: Polyvinyl

Producer: The M’s, Jason Ward (mastering)

I picked up a couple M’s albums via an online Polyvinyl sale after sampling some tracks and approving of the blustery pop rock.  Giving ‘Real Close Ones’ for a spin, though, I find myself admittedly disappointed… but the Allmusic review leads me to believe that in that I ain’t alone.  Plus, once you crank up the volume and give the disc a few spins, you can get more of a picture of what the group was after, but it’s still a mostly muted affair that is sorely lacking the extras that are just buried way too low in the mix.

The disc starts with a pretty thrilling pop rock fuzz out with ‘Big Sound,’ but the repetitive nature of the chorus wears on the listener and thus when the softer tracks kick in thereafter you’ve already had a layer of remove put on the listen.  Some notable noise pops out at various points – the straight-forward ‘Get Your Shit Together’ and the unfortunately titled ‘Bros in Arms’ both work up a nice bluster of keys and distortion – but on the whole one needs to sink into a laid-back glam mindset for the disc with a dash of the echoey Walkmen tossed in – see ‘Breakfast Score’ – though The M’s lack the production chops to make their music fill space like the Walkmen.

On each subsequent listen I would notch the volume up a bit and find a bit more to enjoy, but ‘Real Close Ones’ still isn’t the type of disc to leave a lasting effect.  The chops are there, and those highlights are indicative of the clatter that got me interested in the group, they just don’t pitch their throwback pop with enough energy or attitude to make it stick.  Jason Ward’s warm mastering helps some tracks, but it’s almost ridiculous how buried so many sounds are, and there’s no attempt at flushing them out – it’s like the band wanted some odd keys and recording nuances to be covered completely by the guitar strum and humming vocals, then made all of the levels across the board the same to make the covering noises fairly smooth as well.  So I think there was an attempt to exchange the rock for reverb… and I sense this stuff sounds great live, it just didn’t translate to disc too effectively.

Still, it’s an enjoyable album while its on, and certainly offers enough gleaming moments to make me curious about where they were before this and where they’ll go.