Citizens Here and Abroad - Ghosts of Tables and Chairs (CD)

All Music Guide

Citizens Here and Abroad isn't the first alternative poprock band that has had a female lead singer who favors a deadpan vocal style, and it's safe to assume they won't be the last. The deadpan approach has worked well for everyone from Suzanne Vega to preLovelife, pre"Ladykillers Lush; thankfully, it works fairly well for Citizens Here and Abroad's Adrienne Robillard on Ghosts of Tables and Chairs. No one will mistake Robillard for a belter; she's far from that. Like Vega, Robillard thrives on subtlety, restraint and understatementthose are her trademarks, and they're perfect for the moody, spacy, droning ambiance that Citizens Here and Abroad favors on this 2004 release. Ghosts of Tables and Chairs isn't meant to be aggressively hardrockingthe whole thing is like an endless poprock drone, and Robillard's deadpan girlishness fits right in. One of the things that gives this CD its droning quality is the fact that the group doesn't always adhere to a traditional verse/chorus/verse/choru...s song structure. On many of the songs, guitar playingnot real chorusesseparates the verses that Robillard sings, and even though Citizens Here and Abroad are melodic, they're aren't melodic in a hooky way. The nochorus/nohooks policy that often prevails on Ghosts of Tables and Chairs doesn't exactly make it an album that goes out of its way to be accessiblecertainly not if verse/chorus/verse/chorus hookiness is your idea of accessibility. But for those who aren't afraid of some abstraction and angularity, this CD isn't badmildly uneven, but not bad. The writing could have been a bit more consistent, but all things considered, Ghosts of Tables and Chairs leaves listeners with a favorable impression of the Bay Area foursome. - Alex Henderson, All Music Guide Read more Less