Chorus by Literature - Unice Liu Review

Literature is an alternative and indie musical group composed of Chris Schackerman, Seth Whaland, Nathaniel Cardaci, and Kevin Attics. They have two albums; ‘Arab Spring’ released in 2012, and ‘Chorus’ released in 2014. Although I had never listened to their music prior to this assignment, I definitely have added a few of their tracks onto my playlists. I enjoyed a lot of the tracks on ‘Chorus’ specifically. However, I thought ‘Chorus’ was an album that could have been more well-rounded.

I loved the energy that the music brought at first. I could vividly picture walking through the streets of Europe during summer while listening to ‘Chorus,’ or any one of these songs becoming the TikTok soundtrack to aesthetic summer montages. However, after listening to an entire album of songs with the same type of vibe, I did grow a bit tired of it. I love the albums that have a lot of variety within them, with songs ranging from ballads to pop rock. I believe those albums are the ones that tell a story and turn an album from scattered pieces of music to a well-written storyline. As beautiful as the songs on ‘Chorus’ were, I would have enjoyed listening to them separately, since by the end, everything started to sound the same to me. It almost felt like these songs were all being thrown together on an album, but there was no real story behind it.

My favorite songs on the album are ‘Court/date’ and ‘Blase.’ These were the main songs that truly stood out to me among the mix; ‘Blase’ sounded very vivid to me. It felt like I could close my eyes and imagine a perfect scenario where this song would be playing in a movie. ‘Court/date’ sounded a bit “tamer” to me compared to the rest of the album, it was less full-on rock and had a bit of indie, low-fi to it as well. It would be the perfect song to play when the car window is wide open at night-time.

However, ‘Kites’ and ‘English soft hearts’ were not my personal favorites; the introduction to Kites was not the best way to open the song, in my opinion. The sound effects sounded very obscure and something that made me want to skip the song almost immediately. Maybe it was also the fact that this was the last song, but I felt like I had been hearing the same types of instruments used for almost the entirety of the album, and by the end of it, I did not enjoy it. On the other hand, ‘English Soft Hearts’ was also a bit softer than ‘The Girl, the Gold watch, and Everything’ but it was still very similar to the opening track. I would have wanted more variety between the different tracks.

Although this album was personally not my favorite, I would enjoy listening to the tracks individually with other genres of songs shuffled in between. All the music was very well done, but sounded way too similar to be a well-rounded album.