“Islands Forever“
from the album With Me
2007
iTunes
Young Seattle band Siberian has only been around for three years, but their full-length debut With Me sounds extremely polished. The band’s short time together has obviously been well-spent, and they’ve honed a sound that combines soaring shoegaze guitars with lead singer Finn Parnell’s spot-on melodies. While Siberian’s birthplace is the Pacific Northwest, their music has the elemental makeup of overdriven Brit-pop. They could probably fit in quite unobtrusively on a bill with bands like Doves and Elbow, and critics are already making a comparison between Finn’s voice and ’90s-era Thom Yorke. What sets Siberian apart from the majority of British bands is their indie-inspired guitar work, which is reverb-heavy and reliant on angular structure. Many of the album’s instrumental moments sound derived from the likes of Minus the Bear and even Explosions in the Sky. Sure, every element of the band’s sound seems easily attributable to obvious influences, but it would be unfair to label Siberian as copycats. They may not be reinventing the wheel, not yet at least, but With Me is above-average from start to finish. They’ve assembled a deservedly buzzworthy debut.