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Album Review

Zoey Van Goey
And The Cage Was Unlocked All Along Left in the Dark

Article written by James S - Jun 30, 2009

Zoey Van Goey - And The Cage Was Unlocked All Along

Rock rules for new bands no. 6: Create a good enough myth and the hits will follow. Well, no-one can fault Zoey Van Goey on the first part anyway. Claiming to be named after an Amish girl who found fame on the New York street art scene before moving to Berlin, Google and Wikipedia contain a complete dearth of information on the mysterious Ms Van Goey.

So, what about the hits? Well, none so far and this isn’t likely to change in a hurry. Their largely acoustic jangle is undoubtedly catchy but just doesn‘t reach for the stars often enough. Echoes of Noah and the Whale and the Magic Numbers reverberate across the record and fellow Glaswegians, Belle and Sebastian have a few fingers in the pie, both literally and laterally.

As the title ‘The Cage Was Unlocked All Along’ suggests, themes of freedom and entrapment, some real and others imaginary, pervade this album. The Best Treasure Stays Buried sees a pair of armed robbers hiding their ill-gotten gains from one last job before preparing to separate and lie low. Two White Ghosts, one of the record’s highlights, tells the tale of a mismatched couple thrown together in the alien surroundings of teaching English in Japan.

Zoey Van Goey are built around the shared vocals of an English girl (Kim Moore) and a Canadian guy (Matt Brennan) and this is noticeable on the likes of Sweethearts in Disguise and We All Hid In Basements, which share the same low-key dramatic indie sensibilities as the similarly transatlantic Stars. The latter is a slightly embarrassed reminiscence of Y2K fear and paranoia with a ‘future’/‘suture’ rhyme nicked directly from The Postal Service.

Only Nae Wonder, which sees Brennan and Moore finish off each other’s sentences in a cloying manner and features some horrible sampled spoken word, is particularly duff but a few other tracks simply barely register in the first place. The cage may have been unlocked all along, but sadly the beast is too often asleep.

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/zoeyvangoey

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