A few weeks back some peeps and I were in a round table discussion about a band’s sound potential, and how it often it doesn’t make it to the shiny disc that slides into the CD player. You see a band play live somewhere and pick up the CD at the show because they really blew you away. Without listening to it first, you pass it along to a friend, “You’ve got to check these guys out. They put on an amazing show and were really intense!” Then your friend calls and asks how many beers you had that night, saying that he doesn’t get the level of the band’s intensity you emphatically claimed.
Lead singer of The 101, Eric Richter, is a survivor. Having come close to death via a blood-clot to the heart, he’s living the second life in his cat years. On Numbers, you’re able to pick up on that passion for a new lease on life in his singing, but I have a distinct feeling that this release’s production leaves a lot of the sweat and blood on the studio room floor. “Domino” and “Mott Haven” are driving numbers, where Richter’s vocals run into the realm of Michael Stipe’s vintage “Radio Free Europe” spirit and “Tumble” almost gets you to the top, but doesn’t throw you over the edge.
Throughout Numbers there is the hollow feeling, like a thirst that’s not being quenched. It’s obvious that The 101 have talent, but we may not discover just how much until we’re one of the many heads pictured on the CD’s cover, listening to what they have to give.
