My Divider

Album Review

On My Divider, Dinosaur Bones aim for a kind of amiable return to the mid-'90s indie rock style — retrospective by default on the one hand but every so often spiked with a yearning anthemic charge that feels very 21st century. Songs like "Sharks in the Sand" and the title track, especially toward its conclusion, have a slightly glazed feeling in the arrangements that — perhaps thankfully — isn't shoegaze per se but veers close, helped in part by Ben Fox's almost sweetly sung vocals. Meanwhile, Lucas Fredette's walloping drums create the sense of aim-for-the-heights stomp familiar from contemporary acts. "Point of Pride" is the moment when the band completely goes for it — it's not Led Zeppelin in full flight, but it is a tense, building song that only eases back just enough at points before roaring in again. The perhaps appropriately titled "Highwire Act" comes close to that feeling as well, just enough of a reach up and out beyond simply being four musicians jamming in a room somewhere. At a couple of points throughout — the extended introduction to "Hunters," a minute's worth of slowly unfolding feedback and texture, the buried slow handclap rhythm on "Life in Trees," the slow, shimmering start of "Ice Hotels" — there's a sense, just enough, that they may find a path away from fairly straightforward rock arrangements worth exploring in further detail. Until then, at least, they've got something pleasant going for them.