With a name that sounds out like a drug and an earthy lo-fi sound that recalls everything from American folk to grunge, New Delhi band Mocaine have enough to invite ears in to listen to their second release The Remainder.
As is the case with plenty of Indian bands, Mocaine have had problems with personnel, the means to record and then some. Is it fair to put all that at the back of your mind when you hear a record that’s reaching for the most despondent, despairing sort of sonic tone? The band’s seven-track EP, The Remainder, is sometimes hazy and almost strewn around, but at the core of it there’s real, raw emotion coming out of the speakers.
They start and close with an instrumental jam called ‘Mr. Sniffles, the Sad Clown’, which is reprised at the end, packing this album in a guitar lick-oriented jam vibe, punctuated with the sniffles of their cold-struck drummer playing an acoustic guitar.
The Remainder is a hit or miss affair in some ways, but there are songs that certainly grow on you. Among the strengths that Mocaine has in its songwriting armory is a stirring violin section that provides a perfect foreground to a strummed acoustic guitar and vocals by Amrit Mohan and Suhasini Mukherjee. It feels like they arrive at their most poignant by the time they close off
‘Candlelight’ with a haunting refrain, but ‘Suspended Animation’ follows up with an even more powerful dose of sadness.
Even on their second track ‘The Empty’, Mocaine are already aiming for hardcore melancholy echoing with the liberal use of roomy reverb effects on the voices, although it gets offset by the somewhat lazy ‘Big City Love’, which is quieter and more folksy, but doesn’t really hold your concentration.
The Remainder is not a sonic breakaway as such for the slow-tempo loving bunch in Mocaine, but more of a collection of songs that want to be emotionally cohesive. They achieve this for the most part, even if it may not hold everyone’s attention.
