People often use the slang term “vanilla” to describe things that are boring, unadventurous, plain, etc. The problem with the term is that vanilla can be quite a delicious flavour, especially when it’s derived from real vanilla bean for homemade desserts. This being the case, I hesitate to use the word to describe this Toronto quartet’s debut long-player.
I could call it oatmeal, but even then, I’ve eaten some very flavourful oatmeal, so let’s kick it down a notch. What Zeus have created here is akin to a cold bowl of plain oatmeal. I’m not trying to be especially mean; I’m trying to draw a comparison here that conveys just how unoriginal and tired the sound of Say Us is.
The album’s all-over-the-map-ness indicates that Zeus just hasn’t settled on a sound yet. They want to be too many things at once, and they’re doing it in such a heavy-handed way that the whole thing just comes off as derivative. Most of Say Us falls somewhere between the Strokes and Sloan, but Zeus lack both the aloofness of the former and the charm of the latter to make the sound work, not to mention that they have neither of their knack for melody. Incidentally, the cheapest Strokes imitation here is certainly “Kindergarten,” on which singer Mike O’Brien puts on his best Julian Casablancas impression to croon the utterly empty phrase “all I want to do is clap, all I want to do is sing.”
When they aren’t channeling the spirits of their two primary influences, Zeus are ripping off other artists even more thoroughly. “The Renegade” is pure Beck, from the song’s opening guitar drawl through to the meandering guitar solo in the middle - hell, O’Brien even does his damnedest to sound like Beck himself. Elsewhere, “I Know” sounds like an OK Go b-side that just wasn’t catchy enough to make the album.
But in the end, it comes down to this: a good album is either engaging in a way that pushes boundaries and challenges the listener or it forgoes experimentalism for sheer melody and hooks. In some very rare cases, it can do both, but unfortunately for Zeus, it cannot do neither.
