To my shame, I have to confess that I am not that familiar with Last Letters music. But I will say that if this compilation is made up of the music that was left on the cutting room floor, as it were, then it is a situation I will rectify immediately. If not sooner.
Broadly speaking, this is the sound of an emo-laced singer-songwriter being fleshed out by a band, and by the term singer-songwriter, I mean that the core songs are important, wonderfully present due to the deft way they are built up, more than just the core idea to make a noise over, which many bands seem content with. These are songs that stand up on their own, fleshed out in such a way that the original idea still breathes, so that the light gets in…mainly.
As no less than Liam Gallagher once said in a rare moment of lucidity, if you can play a song just on a battered acoustic guitar and it sounds okay, you have a good song. And that is the ethic here, even after they have been built up into full band mode. (If you like the idea of good songs delivered in the most unadorned ways, jump straight to “I Love You, Amy Smart.)
Take “One Cannon,” here bombastic, big and brilliant, but I bet if you slowed it down, played it solo with hushed vocals, it would sound as good. “No Reason” has that head-wobbling sixties lilt that bands like Weezer were so good at, “California Sun” is The Rivieras going punk, and there is a neat take of The Connells “Slackjawed.”
It’s a great collection; the unreleased tracks show that Charles Iwuc’s songwriting is fantastic, and the covers show that he has great taste. And as I said at the start, if this is the stuff he discards… well, you know what I’m saying!
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