Roadside Monument -- I Am the Day of Current Taste

8/10

Whatever experience and skill Roadside Monument needed to pull off their musical vision, by their final album, I Am the Day of Current Taste, they have both earned it and learned it. The band's debut album, Beside This Brief Hexagonal, showed a band reaching for something beyond their grasp. They played a very simplistic emo-rock style, and yet tried to shy away from basic song structures, stretching their abilities well past their limits. On 1998's I Am the Day of Current Taste, the band stretch out the song lengths, but their playing and writing now fill the songs with good musicianship and interesting parts and shifts (hey, 1/4 of the song titles feature automobiles!).
Admittedly I picked up the bands's debut and final albums at a thrift sale after remembering that when I was a teenager, a lot of people in my circle were fond of them. I don't know about the album and EP's the band put out in between the two full lengths I have, and what kind of musical growth those showed. I do know that I Am the Day of Current Taste nearly sounds like it is performed by a different band than the one who performed on the band's debut. Perhaps the improved song-structuring and musicianship are also due to contributions from members of the band Ninety Pound Wuss, who helped out in the studio. Maybe they are due to the influence of Frodus, with whom the band previously recorded a split-EP (moments of this album certainly sound like Frodus). It's also obvious that Roadside Monument have realized that vocals are not their strong-suit, as they have mitigated their effect here, more often than not letting the music do the talking. With that said, the vocals do show improvement from the debut.
I don't know, I almost feel like it is not my place to talk about this band, like they were a part of some thing that I ignored, and now am sort of lukewarmly acknowledging. All that aside, I Am the Day of Current Taste is a solid progressive rock album with a more punk/indie feel than the heavier genres now more associated with that descriptor, and I like listening to it (not sure if emo applies here, as the hallmarks of that genre are largely abest). On to the next review...I think it's of a Roots of Orchis album...wait, no...it's a soundtrack?


1998 Tooth & Nail Records
1. I Am The Day Of Current Taste 7:01
2. OJ Simpson House Auction 6:29
3. Taxiriding As An Artform 3:50
4. Cops Are My Best Customers 6:25
5. The Lifevest 6:43
6. Egos The Size Of Cathedrals 4:11
7. This City Is Ruthless And So Are You 5:41
8. Car Vs Semi, Semi Wins Every Time 8:17