Local Record Review: Her Voice Remains

When Her Voice Remains appear this Sunday, opening for Peter Murphy at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, on the one hand, it'll be an expected enough spot for a SoCal night out: local band with a taste for darker clothing and musical moods appearing on a bill featuring an ex-member of Bauhaus.

As the group's newest release its first in four years, shows, though, Her Voice Remains don't fall prey to the too-common approach of Goth as self-serious sonic straitjacket. The title track of Fifty Fathoms is much more tightly wound and spiked-up '80s new wave than doom and gloom, Elias Gamboa's guitar and lead singer Danielle's vocals calling to mind acts such as Romeo Void and the Motels more than anything else.

It's a promising start for an enjoyable, kick-up-your-heels kind of a listen the four-song effort provides, each track sounding very much like it should be soundtracking something in a John Hughes film without simply cloning it. If songs such as the romantic surge of "Run Away" and the gentler swing of "Eternally" are working in a familiar form, then the rhythm section of Jeffrey P. and Stefan Veselko keep up a brisk kick and pace--you get a feeling the band want to actually bring the full effect onstage.

Still, it has to be said there is something straight-up mood-setting in calling the final song "Of the Sickness, Of the Swoon." But that it bursts out the gate as a cleaner, brighter-sounding take on classic punk-rock punch shows that if you're coming for morose moans, this isn't the band. And good on them for that.

Fifty Fathoms can be heard via www.myspace.com/hervoiceremains as well as iTunes and Amazon.