Fever - Red Bedroom (12 tracks) +Album Reviews

Red Bedroom = Red Rum

Felipe Gomez | 07/19/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If Billy Idol and Nicky Sixx beat up the rest of the Beach Boys, kidnapped Brian Wilson and took him to every dirty bar in Mexico before locking him in a studio for three days with nothing but old porno mags, Red Bedroom is the album he'd make. The Fever is music's answer to television's Three's Company. Jasper is a like a vocal Jack Tripper. He knocks and kicks over each song with John Ritter's chaotic-grace while Pony's baselines bounce more than Suzanne Somers returning from a jazzercise class. Sanchez's guitar is sexier than when Terri played the naughty nurse and J's organ play is sleazier than one of Larry's come-ons. Achilles keeps the whole gang together and grounded better than a one of Janet's orchestrated group hugs and hits harder than Mr. Furley's karate chops. The Fever is crazed antics and limitless madness and Red Bedroom is like a reckless night at the Regal Beagle. If you've ever tried to wash a regrettable night out of your soul with a shower and some mouth wash, only to find yourself reveling about it a week later and returning to the scene of the crime, The Fever is your band and Red Bedroom is your soundtrack. Also, if you get a chance to see these guys live do it, they are all this and a stick of dynamite."

Great job for their first full length

Kevin | Lexington Park, MD | 05/23/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Now I'll admit that this cd was not as great as I thought it would be. 4 stars because this cd is quite good, but not over-the-top good. The Fever's Pink on Pink E.P. was 15 minutes of pure, spastic genius, so I bought this cd with very very high expectations. However, they seem to tone down on the frenetic energy that you feel on Pink on Pink. Ladyfingers is on Red Bedroom, but it's a different, less intense version.But enough negativity. This actually is a great cd. They do a great job mixing new wave pop rock and caustic indie/punk. It's unique all the way through. It's like if you took Devo, locked them in a room with 15 hungry badgers, and said "Write some songs for us." Crazy, squawking-to-serenading vocals, hypnotic keyboards, fast, frantic, punky guitar work, robot voices....Yep, that's Red Bedroom. Enjoy!"

Nice...Pretty Varied

LoudSoft | Earth! | 06/26/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Fever's a pretty decent band, they always remind me of '80s rock, but that's just me. I like this CD because the song types vary. "Dream Machine" is sort of slow and creepy, "Scorpio" is like a slighty techno song, and "Gray Ghost" sounds nearly ska in a few parts. It's a very nice mix of different styles of songs. It's certainly worth buying."

Can't sleep in the "Bedroom"

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 09/05/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"When a band has oddly-monikered members like "J" and "Achilles," you know it must be worth looking at. New York-based The Fever burst onto the scene with the delicious trash'n'glam rock EP "Pink on Pink." Now the weirdly-named band members follow up with an solid debut LP, "Red Bedroom," full of the sort of music you'd hear in a robot-themed club. It's plenty of fun, if not much more.

It opens with a bizarre hybrid of percussion, bass and organ in the catchy "Cold Blooded," followed by the heavy organ of "Gray Ghost" and the stomping percussion of "Slow Club." But the music gets perky and catchy, making you want to dance when Fever breaks into the infectious "Ladyfingers" and "Labor of Love."

Some of the songs are definitely lacking -- "Hexxed" sounds completely aimless, like the band was just jamming during a creative lull. They get back their spark in robotic dance numbers like "Scorpio," a simple track that keeps repeating "S-C-O-R-P-I-O/scorpio, scorpio/... my sign is rising!". But the Fever gets surprisingly poignant in anthemic final track, the nostalgic "Diamond Days."

The Fever tend to dip back into 80s-flavored music, with lots of influence from Devo and Grandmaster -- a mix of the catchy and the chilly. And while "Pink on Pink" was fun, "Red Bedroom" shows that they've polished their sound a little. The sleazy-computer-club sound is still there, it's just more refined than in their EP.

The music is a fun, catchy mash of guitar, bass, Achilles' spasmic drums, and J's rippling organ work, transforming it from merely toe-tapping to insanely catchy. And the quality of Geremy Jasper's vocals is hard to tell in tracks like "Scorpio," where he sounds like a drunken android, but in "Ladyfingers" he lets rip with all his overwrought howling might.

At times he' s totally drowned out by the music, but maybe that's not a bad thing. The songwriting is very vivid and captivating, but it rarely makes a lot of sense. They seem almost like a hallucination, with smoke pouring out of cold lips, tigers slipping through zebra stripes, vampires, and gray ghosts: "You paint yrself in a corner/gold threaded white lies/needles in my eyes..." and "your heavy head'll break your neck/rest it next to me/dream machine/the smoke rings circle your eyes..."

Wild wails, nightmarish songwriting and frenetic grooves make up the flashy android club sound of "Red Bedroom." Fun dance music, but the sort of thing that has to grow on you."

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