Music Review: The Belles' new album Omertá opium to fans

Published: Wednesday, January 29, 2003


In the domineering face of the maniacal sciences and robo-pleasure, musicians like The Belles remain unfazed.

Music has always been renowned for its powers to affect the listener, and now a Baltimore-based company is taking this characteristic of music to the extreme.

The Brain Generated Music device or BGM, monitors individual brain algorithms through three attachable wave monitors then generates unique sounds intended to send listeners into an opium daze of unparalleled tranquility known as the "Relaxation Response." No one can definitively project the force of the blow such an apparatus would deal to the music industry.

But The Belles persevere, whether the band knows it or not, and on the noteworthy debut, Omertá, the group adequately demonstrates that the by-products of the scientific revolution are not necessary to produce phonographic bliss. When it comes to music, man will ultimately prevail over machine.

This is not to say that Omertá is flawless. Like too many modern rock albums, it clocks in at just over 35 minutes. Surprisingly, though episodic, the album's range is far and wide, making it well worth a three-hour, minimum wage investment.

In fact, lead singer/songwriter Christopher Tolle has created so many flavors that the chief taste engineers at Jelly Belly are working double-time to keep up.

Equipped with condensed backing vocal ingenuity, frequently demanding that the listener pay more attention to the secondary than the primary intonations, The Belles have created an appealing album. Omertá's trajectory should land it on the top-ten lists of the less trepid critics, lest it be forgotten come December.

But with tracks like "Never Said Anything," complete with falsetto bellows and enchanting bar chimes "His Undoing, Was His Undoing," and the Beatle-esque, "You Can't Have it All," circa The White Album, The Belles have, at least in part, shown that natural selection is just as active in music as it is in evolution. The Belles deserve their niche by being prolific and out-competing lazy, comfortable musicians.

Borrowing aesthetic subtleties from Ben Folds and The Get Up Kids, The Belles have a strong structural understanding of the volatile cocktail that is melody, layers and moderation.

As with all great albums, by the time the final track dwindles, the listener is saddened and left wanting more. Marx was wrong, religion is not the opium of the people, good music is.

Omertá is a tranquil experimentation that doesn't follow the scientific method. But the results it yields are promising nevertheless, and while it's certainly hyperbole to suggest that The Belles might save rock, salvation is prescribed in small doses.

If scientists can already elicit the Relaxation Response, within several years they may be able to elicit the entire catalogue of emotions. Punks will be satiated (or apoplectic?) by the stimulation of the "Angst Response," pop-band obsessed teenage girls will be thankful for the "Spontaneous Orgasm Response" -- an alleged phenomena experienced by women who stood too close to the sub-woofer at a Beatles concert -- and hippies will be contented to stimulate the "Euphoria Response" without worrying about detoxing later in the week.

Will science eventually decipher the crapshoot that is music with the BGM device? Will perfectly synchronized neuro-psychological tones replace the need for human drum bashing, off-key crooning, and guitar strumming?

As a wise man once said, "Some beautiful things are more impressive when left imperfect than when too highly finished." And he was a pessimist.

In your face, science.