Exclusive Pre-Release Review: Ionia’s “Captain Humility” E.P.

Ionia

“Captain Humility”

New York, you’ve done it again. Can you do no wrong? When will the time come that this city stops producing some of the best music out there? I don’t have answers to these questions, I only have a true hope that it never stops.

Rather than my usual  tirade before jumping into business I feel given that I’m slightly drink induced and coming down from an upsetting world cup match, that we can get right into it, cool?

Ionia, now I’m not too sure which of those fine gentleman in the picture above are present in the band because doing some digging I can only seem to find 3 members when there are clearly 5 in that photo (had to count that out for a minute) never the less they hail from the great city that is New York.

The reason I’m currently writing this all out is due to the fact that all these fine gents are planning on dropping their debut EP “Captain Humility” on June 24th. Having recorded more than 30 songs with producer Mike Sapone (Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Crime In Stereo, O’Brother) they’ve decided to drop this 3 track EP on your faces, yes 3 of 30. Why would they do this? If they have 30 tracks are these 3 the only good one? Well, no you dingus the band opted for a selective EP to allow each song to be highlighted and stand on its own. 

So what 3 tracks made the grade? To start it off you have the EP titled ‘Captain Humility’ which starting off gives you a nice little calm before the storm. Once Blaise Beyhan’s vocals kick in, it first struck me as something a bit different. I couldn’t quite pin the voice. Look I’m going to stereotype here for a moment, with bands that usually look like this and have a sound like this the singer usually has a much softer voice, not the case here. Blaise has a bit of a raspy nature behind some of the lyrics (which are really the stand out on this ep) but it seems to work well for it. It’s not fitting into the stereotypical sound as I so blatantly did myself before listening to them.

‘Captain Humility’ aside, we jump into ‘They Look Like Big Strong Hands Don’t They ‘ which based off the name alone I loved. I mean come on, who the hell doesn’t like ‘The Never-ending Story.’ This song takes a bit of a softer turn which works well with Beyhan’s voice. Lyrically to me anyway its very reminiscent of something you could have seen coming from the likes of Elliott Smith back in the day. When I first heard this song I was walking along the the seafront just as it was getting dark and the lights of the city starting sparking up and it was one of those moments where the song fits so perfectly in with your surroundings and I couldn’t be more proud that this song made the cut for the EP, definitely the stand out track for me.

To end it all Ionia gives us some ‘Delusions of Grandeur’ (see what I did there?) and again it has something about it that takes a couple listens to really appreciate. In a world of music lover with very short attention spans this ep is something to definitely stick with. Don’t just listen to it for the music, don’t just listen to it for the lyrics, and don’t just listen to it because they may have 3-5 members in the band. Listen to it cause you dig music, put it on whatever device you have your music on turn the volume up and go outside and just experience the ep. If the rest of those 30 tracks are anywhere near good as these 3, this is going to be a hell of a journey.

-James Sparrow

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