Review: Streamline The Alchemist and The Arsonist

If you judged this album by its cover, you might wonder what the graphic designer was smoking while listening to this local prog-rock band’s tunes.

If you’re hoping for Red Stick’s own Rush, you’re out of luck.

Baton Rouge’s Streamline fits quite comfortably in the pop-rock category alongside the spitfire lyricism of Third Eye Blind and Matchbox Twenty.

On The Alchemist and The Arsonist, the band is still trying to decide if they want to go the Southern Rock route (“Let Go”), sensitive pop route (“Thick and Thin,” “Hurricane”) or the sci-fi rock route (“Ghost”).

Either way, the band is shooting for the stadiums. The track times certainly attest to that—the shortest track clocks in at a hefty four minutes.

Though it’s a solid start, it’s also heavy on studio effects. Mike Hogan’s vocals are auto-tuned to the point of distortion.

Streamline’s sounds work best when they relax and don’t take it too seriously, like in the final minute of “Anything,” when guitarist Brad Ourso saves the song with a crunchy blues solo.

Essential tracks: “Arson & Alchemy,” “Anything,” “Let Go.”

Recommended if you like: Third Eye Blind, Daughtry, awkward album covers.There may be a funkier group of white boys in some far-flung corner of the universe, but New Orleans quintet Galactic, led by drummer Stanton Moore, makes a compelling case for NASA to call back the satellites and give up the search. The band brings a set heavy on tunes from its latest album From the Corner to the Block to the Varsity Theatre Nov. 4.