Is Rock dead?

Just posing the question makes me twitch and I’m starting to break out in sweats thinking about it. At the same time though, artists who seem to genuflect to the “Gods of Rock” end up falling into tired tropes, and it’s natural to consider how many times an idea can be recapitulated and still be revolutionary. Bergo ’45, like many rock groups, is a band that owes a debt to the mainstream music of the late 60’s and 70’s however, its 14-track span feels aimless in scope and fails to either honor the bands or advance the genre.

Their first LP, the ambitiously titled Dresden, falls flat of its lofty name and though there are certain moments in their sound worth exploring, the work is largely a hallmark of a band yet to settle into a coherent approach. The firebombed Dresden image that haunts the album’s cover seems to prime the listener for something vaguely political—perhaps offering an exploration into the atrocities of war, or a meditation on dehumanization—but if there’s a loaded message to be taken from the album, it must be buried somewhere in the unintelligible vocals. The album suffers from severe production issues, often dragging the vocal line to the bottom of the mix, where it is gleefully swallowed up by needless, hefty instrumentals. “Mud in Your Eye,” the album’s opening track, is a good example of this defect with vocals that mimic someone in the final throes of treading water—bobbing up and down, dangerously close to being drowned entirely. The lo-fi quality of the recording could work if the band wallowed in the DIY aesthetic and possessed the defiant snub of high fidelity in the vein of bands like The Vaselines. But the music seems to be too calculated to exist in that space.

Aside from the recording quality, the band suffers from self-congratulatory instrumental sections and frivolous fills that move the music nowhere and that could be cut entirely without consequence. “Wasted Words,” a track clocking in at 10 minutes, could be more aptly titled “Wasted Time” as the two minutes of halfway-decent songwriting is regurgitated ad nauseam. It’s as if the band members need the listener to know how proficient they are on their instruments. Though mindless soloing may be impressive at parties, it is positively grating in the context of an album. The drummer is the most grievous offender, offering completely superfluous fills (in “Mud in Your Eye,” “Sweet Mary”), and, in the case of “It’s Just About Time,” creating winded solos that flirt dangerously with falling behind the beat.

The band’s strongest songs, not surprisingly, are its simplest. “Poignant” and “Fifty-Eight,” slower tracks propelled by solid acoustic strumming, seem to hit their intended mark. Without the weight of the other instruments the vocalist drops his falsetto, and instead adopts a lower register, which sounds far less forced than many of the full-band tracks. “And So It Goes” and “Run It,” though imperfect in arrangement, point toward what could be the sound of a band matured. The tracks—which have an almost Smiths, new-wave vibe—instead of fighting against the singer’s vocal range, not only work with his voice but also feature the few moments when the band exhibits a cohesive sound without any hint of competitiveness. In “Run It” especially, the vocalist is almost unbridled in his rawness, and it is one of the few flashes of sincerity that we hear on the album.
Dresden is the sound of a band that might have potential but fails to fully brandish it here. At its best, the album is inconsistent. There are four or five interesting moments, but they lack development (or worse, suffer from a tedious overdevelopment that beats songs within an inch of their lives), and though I have a hunch that Bergo ’45 produces something dynamic and unique in a live setting, it doesn’t translate on the recording, which is often wearily flat sounding. Dresden fails beyond the sum of its dysfunctional parts—it neglects to create anything meaningful, and seconds of musical daring are quickly substituted for fatigued safe-sounding riffs. Rock may not yet be dead, but rest assured that Bergo ’45 is not doing it any favors.