With touring guitarist Jeff Palmer now a permanent member of the band, the
Radar Bros. refashioned themselves as a quartet for 2008's Auditorium. Apart
from the expanded lineup, however, nothing much else has changed, since the
Bros. still sound too languid to venture outside their slowcore comfort zone.
They excel at crafting dreamy ballads that owe as much to sedatives as Pink
Floyd's "Breathe," complete with sleepy-eyed synth swells and jarring,
left-field lyrics ("I keep drinking your tailgate piss, it's you I miss").
The shtick is still effective, but it's also old, as this is the same recipe
the Radar Bros. used to cook up their four previous slabs of half-baked indie
rock. Like Codeine on codeine, Auditorium could nicely orchestrate a lazy
afternoon spent sleeping in the summer sun, yet the album mostly sounds too
leisurely for its own good. Songs meld together, guitar lines fade from
memory, and melodies drift in one ear and out the other. There's little
diversity here to jar the listener awake, only pleasantly smooth tunes for
those seeking to turn on, tune in, and drop out. Returning fans with an
insatiable craving for new material won't necessarily be crushed, but those
seeking to delve into the band's catalog would do better to pick up 2002's
And the Surrounding Mountains, where the songs climb skyward before crashing
back to mundane sea level.