Midwestern rockers Small Brown Bike rip through ten blistering examples of their hybrid hardcore emo and heavy punk on their 2003 release, River Bed.
Double-tracked vocals, occasional harmonies, and discordant guitars are punctuated by lightning-fast stops and angular bridges, allowing the band's raw emotion to be offset by genuinely interesting song structures and instrumentation.
Deftly produced by Dave Feeny, the album sounds bright and well-defined, somehow evading the murkiness that many "heavy indie rock" recordings fall victim to.
With grinding guitars coming from all directions and occasional additional instrumentation (piano, acoustic guitars, acoustic bass) nestled in unobtrusively, the album goes sonically beyond other post-hardcore recordings.
Associations with the Get Up Kids may be inevitable, and while the two bands may sound similar (although Small Brown Bike is much heavier and could probably take 'em in a fight), the members of SBB display much more inventive songwriting and a real attention to the soundscapes they create, transforming emotional three-minute postcards into heavy-duty novellas written in elegant black marker on the concrete walls of their blue-collar town.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deconstruct/RebuildSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 03:25 | 7 MB | 24 MB |
| 2 | Safe in SoundSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 02:58 | 6 MB | 20 MB |
| 3 | A Declaration of SortsSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 03:14 | 7 MB | 22 MB |
| 4 | Scream in the SilenceSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 03:42 | 8 MB | 26 MB |
| 5 | Day and NightmaresSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 04:25 | 10 MB | 29 MB |
| 6 | Tragically EndingSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 03:30 | 8 MB | 24 MB |
| 7 | Sincerely YoursSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 04:05 | 9 MB | 26 MB |
| 8 | What's Missing Is DeadSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 05:10 | 11 MB | 37 MB |
| 9 | The Outline of Your Hand Still Remains on My HandSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 04:37 | 10 MB | 31 MB |
| 10 | A Lesson to RememberSmall Brown Bike | Small Brown Bike | Play | 05:26 | 12 MB | 37 MB |
| 40 mins | 93 MB | |||||
| 40 mins | 282 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Travis Dopp | Guitar, Vocals (Background) |
| 2 | Dave Feeny | Engineer, Pedal Steel, Producer |
| 3 | Jeff Gensterblum | Drums, Vocals (Background) |
| 4 | John Golden | Mastering |
| 5 | A.J. Mogis | Mixing, Producer |
| 6 | Ben Reed | Bass, Design, Photography, Vocals (Background) |
| 7 | Mike Reed | Guitar, Mixing, Vocals |
| 8 | Small Brown Bike | Composer, Engineer, Primary Artist, Producer |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |