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)


(soon more to be translated)


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