Gem Club Falls Short On “In Roses”

Riding on the tail of the decade’s wave of dream pop bands, chamber pop group Gem Club, composed of vocalists Christopher Barnes and Ieva Berberian and cellist Kristen Drymala, released its debut LP, “Breakers,” in September of 2011. Much like its debut, the Boston band’s sophomore effort, “In Roses,” is perhaps best described as hipsterdom’s take on easy listening—while pleasant enough to the ear, the album is plagued by a lack of emotional variation that quickly relegates it to the realm of the uninspired.

At first listen, “In Roses” impresses, seemingly the perfect soundtrack for a snowy winter’s day. The soothing “[Nowhere]” consists of a flood of hazy synths that overlap but manage to avoid discord, while “Michael” contains glimmers of glockenspiel that brighten the drone of the underlying vibrato-less cello line. Each track is simultaneously lush and delicate—but there lies much of the album’s weakness, as continuity teeters on the edge of monotony.

The details of each song on “In Roses” vary, but the structure of each is largely the same: creep in, swell, fade out. “Hypericum,” “Marathon (In Roses),” and “Polly” all begin with the same broken chord motif, and most tracks start quietly with a single instrument before building to a climax through the introduction of additional voices and instruments, and subsequently drifting to a close as voices and instruments fall silent one by one. The impression the listener receives is one of sameness; several songs in, there is nothing jarring or even surprising about “In Roses,” an observation that unfortunately holds true for the majority of the album’s 50 minutes.

It is difficult not to draw comparisons between Gem Club and its better-known counterparts: Barnes’ whispery, emotion-laden falsetto is a cross between those of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. But where Vernon makes up for the unvarying nature of his vocals with intricate instrumental arrangements and Yorke compensates for sometimes simple instrumentals with raw, tortured melodies and lyrical wit, Barnes falls short on all counts: his voice is meek, his arrangements basic, and his lyrics rendered incomprehensible by his mumbled delivery. It soon becomes apparent that what is missing in the ultimately ordinary “In Roses” is the existence of a crucial element that elevates Bon Iver and Radiohead to the extraordinary.

The band is not without promise, however—“In Roses” contains redeeming flashes of brilliance that shine through the tedium of the rest of the album. “Idea for Strings” opens and is interspersed with the wordless shifting harmonies of a choir, a welcome respite from Barnes’ repetitive vocals. In a rare powerful moment, the second half of “Soft Season” features a desolate passage in which the strings rise to a howl, evoking images of the wind gusting over the barren arctic tundra. The album reaches its peak in “QY2,” which begins with sustained vocals that alternate between dissonant second intervals and a single note; the song’s harmonies never quite settle into something comfortable to listen to, but for Gem Club, this sense of discomfort is one of their sole instances of musical innovation and thus the high point of “In Roses.”

What Gem Club lacks, then, is not talent but musical maturity. For all its instances of inspiration, “In Roses” as a whole comes across as indie Muzak, falling easily into the realm of the mediocre. Much may lie in store for the young trio, but Barnes, Berberian, and Drymala must first learn to translate their emotions into song before they can realize their full potential.