Festival Sédières: "[...] Puis, la place est laissée aux groupes
de rock a guitares... Le premier à fouler la scène est
l'une des révélations de l'année avec le très
recommandable album Birds at home : les Hollandais volants d'Alamo
Race Track. Malgré un volume sonore trop élevé
(culminant avec une orgie de larsens ˆ la fin du show), les quatre
musiciens ont proposé au public (très réceptif)
un set aussi brûlant que glacial. La musique d'Alamo Race Track
est en effet aussi bien dans la veine Joy Division (ambiances froides
et gothiques, chant superbe et prenant à la Ian Curtis) que
dans celle d'un rock aérien et énergique avec guitares
acérées. Sur disque, l'effet est saisissant, mais dans
une salle de concert, l'intensité, la qualité et la
versatilité des compositions d'Alamo Race Track éclate
au grand jour. La série de tubes acidulés enchaînés
avec une virulence à peine croyable provoque carrément
des envies de pogos, de plongée en apnée, de virée
nocturne dans une forêt bien sombre, voire de sauts dans le
vide sans parachute. Ce groupe semble avoir un potentiel pour conquérir
un large public. Il a impressionné tout le monde à Sédières...
Et même le chanteur de The National, qui ira longuement féliciter
son homologue après le concert et remerciera sur scène
Alamo Race Track pour sa prestation."
(Pierre Andrieu)
"The Austin Chronicle" (Sat. March 20,
2004): "[...] Amsterdam's Alamo race track, on the other hand,
does rock. Brittle and discordant riffs play off melodic vocals, with
the guitar players using the tonal contrast of Gibson and Fender guitars
to good advantage. Their chunky, pounding intesity calls to mind Jesus
Lizard or Jawbox, with a power and gravity the opening band never
quite mustered up. Closer "Tell me what is going on" hit
a double-time tempo with an urgency that wrapped up their set like
a nice little package of arsenic." (Jerry Renshaw)
ALAMO
RACE TRACK ALBUM REVIEWS
French press: 'Une merveille de rock atmospherique et tranchant, par des
hollandais volants. [...]En abrege, Alamo Race Track donne ART - et
c'en est.' Les Inrockuptibles
'Alamo Race Track livre un album qui donne furieusement envie de vire,
une bouffee d'oxygene dans l'ambiance morose collective de la pop
actuelle. [...] Alors que d'autres tentent le pluralisme stylistique
sans rien vraiment maitriser, Alamo Race Track se permet le luxe de
multiplier les directions sans jamais nous emmerder.' Rock Mag
Comes With A Smile (CWAS #13, november 2003), From
the Dutch label that brought us classic albums from the likes of Daryll-Ann,
Johan and Bauer, comes new signings Alamo Race Track. Frontman Ralph
Mulder didn't find these songs peering into an empty beer bottle,
or in the parting note of a lost love. Instead that least-likely rock'n'roll
pastime, bird-watching [stop sniggering at the back please] inspired
this set of neo popsongs. Short Leave is sung with the breathy intimacy
of Dakota Suite, although its piano backing has a spring in its step,
and Summer Holiday is every bit the soundtrack to a super-8 film of
a student-packed car cruising the seafront, interspersed with some
volleyball scenes of course. Between the two extremes 'Birds at Home'
delivers some classy, contemporary pop that owes a debt to the likes
of Radiohead and first album Sparklehorse, whilst tapping into the
New York water supply on the upbeat Wild Bees, Speed Up and We Like
To Go On. It makes for a schizophrenic listen, as Mulder and Co swing
between subtle acoustic mood music and punchy new wave, his expressive
voice negotiating the curves with ease.
(Matt Dornan)
Plato Mania (26/08/03), Excelsior has an enormous reputation concerning their ability
to spot new talent in Holland. Try summing up the best Dutch releases
of the last couple of years and chances are conciderable that it is
a excelsior-release. After Daryll-Ann, Ceasar and Johan, last month
the label released an album of the Norwegian band Sergeant Petter.
For a moment there was the fear of Dutch talent being 'dried -up'.
But this month proofs different: The newest excelsior release is the
Dutch band Alamo Race Track with their brilliant debut-album Birds
at home. A great guitar sound as could have been expected from
an Excelsior release. In the more accessible songs the band has a
Beatles-like sound of Daryll-Ann or Johan, other songs that are more
against the grain call upon everything from The Talking Heads, The
Buzzcocks trough Jef Buckley, while the hypnotizing miniature songs
with a whispering voice have somewhat of a Sparklehorse-like sound.
Birds at Home is an album you have to play more than once, but when
you do it is clear that Excelsior again added a classic to their catalogue.
The label calls Birds at home the soundtrack of the comming
fall but in our view it is the soundtrack of all comming seasons.
(Erwin Zijleman)
Tubantia (02/09/03), New Dutch rock and call upon all superlatives there are
because Alamo Race Track is truly special. Ralph Mulder, Guy Bours,
Leonard Lucieer and David Corel already played together in the nineties
in a band called Redivider wich won the Dutch pop-award 1998. As Alamo
race track the foursome make ingenious and subtle rock that has its
roots aswell in the post-new wave bands like Talking Heads or Smiths
as in the melodious songs of David Crosby, Sparklehorse or Beach Boys.
The album is ingenious in its detail, the handclaps in a left-channel,
the distortion of a singing- voice, guitarlicks tha follow the vocals
and more of the kind. You could perhaps blame A.R.T. that it really
is 'art'; before you know it, the whole thing could go as far as to
appear similar to The Nits. Fortunately that's not the case and all
that dominate now are amazement and joy over something as beautiful
as this.
(Theo Hakkert)
De Volkskrant (04/09/03), Those who are following the Excelsior-label, knew the debut
of Alamo Race Track was comming. Everywhere they appeared live, where
at times the songs appeared rather difficult. But Excelsior is specialized
in the growing and cultivating of a young band and their repertoire.
It is only in this fashion that an artist like Spinvis could eventually
blossom. And yes, Birds at Home of Alamo race track is an excellent
debut. The song with that strange scale-like melody appears as a perfect
Weezer-song: Summer Holiday. That somewhat 'angular' rocksong (Speed
up) sounds in this Frans Hagenaars recording beautifully transparent.
The soft 'whispering' -songs are just as fine. The band of singer
Ralph Mulder works with a lot of different styles and rythms but luckily
the feared scattering of styles is nowhere to be found and the whole
sounds as a unity.
Excelsior was right again.
(Menno Pot)
Planet (09/09/03),
Birds at home (Excelsior recordings) is the long awaited debutalbum
of Alamo Race Track (former Redivider), a band that already made a
good impression at several Dutch festivals. If you could speak of
a typical Excelsior-album, this is one of them: Delicate misery put
in just as delicate and sublime songs. You could argue that aswell
as other excelsior bands like Daryl-ann or Ceasar, Alamo race track
is not free of a certain indulgence in an 'academic' navel-gazing.
Let us say that it's not a reckless jamsession in a smokey basement.
But the spontaneity doesn't suffer from this. Singer Ralph Mulder
may have an American accent, it is Lennon and McCartney that seems
to be driving A.R.T., and Lennon predominates. This may seems like
a genaralization but it only serves as an association. Lennon's feel
for melody but also his capriciousness seems apparent here. This is
what immidiately lifts the album above average. At the Birds is a,
as is often said, 'full-grown/mature' record. And if I'm right it
will grow even more while listening to it repeatedly. Next weekend
A.R.T. is playing at the "In the city"-festival in Manchester.
Hopefully some invluentious and still honest person within the music-industry
will see this band and could take them further. Better still, one
should consider internationally distributing all of Excelsior's great
bands.
(Miriam Notenboom)
