Music Review: Zambri – Zambri EP

Zambri is another New York-based band, but I guess its one unique characteristic is that its fronted by two sisters Jessica and Cristi-Jo and boy can they have attitude. It’s hard to describe the six songs on the band’s self-titled EP, let alone the music as a whole. At the very least, the band plays rock music. But even that’s playing it too safe.

There’s a lot going on in every song. The sisters are unrelenting in their quest to always keep the music moving forward. In “God” it almost seems as if their vocals, not the drums or the guitars, are the foundation of the song. There isn’t a section of more than ten seconds where there aren’t any vocals.

Two songs seem the most out-of-place when it comes to sounding similar to the other songs. In the sisters’ best Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) impersonation in the opening track “Aliens” the song is minimalist with respect to the amount of heavy instrumentals and vocals. Despite a Zambri-like introduction, “I Said” follows in the opening track’s footsteps by easily being very mellow, also, with respect to the rest of the album.

I probably should be more specific when describing the “rest of the album” because the EP has only six tracks. Having dealt with three songs already, I’m halfway there. That being said, Zambri’s remaining tracks are their best.

Right from the album’s start you can notice the feminism in the music. The vocals are very dominant in the album as a whole, but seem especially to be in control in “Get Dressed.” The sisters’ voices give the chorus a more catchy, up-beat sound, which they duplicate in the extremely danceable “Hallways.”

It’s fitting that the closing song is “:20” because it seems to encompass the two Zambri sounds all in one track. The song’s first half is both simple and mellow, while the latter half is energetic and body-movin’ appealing. It would be really interesting to hear how a full-length album would sound like.