You May Already be Dreaming

You May Already be Dreaming
Neva Dinova
(Saddle Creek, 2008)
Rating: 63%

Saddle Creek’s Neva Dinova open their newest outing, You May Already be Dreaming, with a depressing thought: 'It’s so hard to love your body from the ground.' This kind of sentiment doesn’t really let up. It’s almost as if the band is trying to force their way into the scarred and skeptical Saddle Creek posse, like a high school freshman trying to fit in with his or her senior class peers (though these dudes look older than Conor Oberst).

I don’t know much about alt-country music, but from my understanding, it seems like Neva Dinova do it pretty well. You May Already be Dreaming, fluctuates between slow, brooding, lackluster numbers and straightforward bar rockers. Without question, the dawdling tunes get the point across much better.

It’s a pretty solid album, though, in spite of being quite a snoozer. Nothing really sticks out, aside from the underwater sound trickery on “Squirrels,” but I don’t really hear anything offensive here, nothing really to complain about. Aside from the blatant Band of Horses rip called “Apocalypse.” I forgot about that.

Oh, and as a whole, it's pretty boring.