Artist: The Echelons
Title: Don’t Kiss Her Face
Website: myspace.com/theechelons
Style: Pop/Rock
Label: Petrella Promotions
Rating: 7.8 out of 10
By C.W. Ross

The band, The Echelons, harkens back to the 70’s when family groups where all the rage. The band’s lineup is the Petrella family’s dad Ben (guitars, vocals), daughter Jessica (vocals, keys), and son Louis (vocals, guitar, keys) along with neighbors Brian-Binger-Santo (bass) and Brandon Grande (drums).

Besides dad Ben who has previous musical experience having played with the bands, The Drive-Ins and King Neptune & Wally World, the group is made up of fresh faced teenagers. The band’s press material describes them as a, ’sort of modern day partridge family with a punk rock attitude, except for the fact that they do play their own instruments and write their own songs.’

The well known phrase, ‘diamond in the rough,’ fits this group perfect. As I listened to the music found on Don’t Kiss Her Face, the band’s debut release, I could hear the talent coming through in their music, but I could also detect, that like a fine wine takes time to age and become its best this band needs to get some more musical road miles underneath their belt to hit their full stride.

Also the production found on this release just didn’t work for me. When I first put the CD in to my stereo and hit the play button I had to almost double my normal volume setting to be able to hear the music without having to strain my ears. Also some of the vocal effects that were used on the songs felt really out of place. Some of the songs also felt like they should have been edited just a little bit more to give them a tighter feel.

All of the things that I’ve mentioned are easy fixes and more on the technical production side then actual music related ones.

Now let’s get on to the positives found on this release. The songs use a mixture of both female and male lead vocals. For me the female ones worked best as I think that Jessica Petrella is old enough that her vocals chop are fully developed.

Jessica also has an interesting vocal style that changes to adapt to each song, at times she had an early Debbie Harry (Blondie) punk attitude found on them, while at other times her vocals reminded me more of Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette.

The songs that feature male lead vocals I didn’t like as much. I don’t think that it’s a matter of talent; I just think that the young singer needs a few more years for his vocals to fully develop to the point of being able to carry a song with them.

The songs also feature a lot of backing vocals in them. While most of them fit the songs and brought something new to them, the band just needs to be careful to not over do it and go too far with overusing them in their songs.

The songs found on Don’t Kiss Her Face are mostly driven by their guitar parts along with the many guitar intros and solos that are also found in them. The drum beats are steady and like a train station conductor keep the songs on track.

“Remember Me,” is the first track and it gets things off to a nice start with its up tempo guitar parts and lyrics that deal with young love, a subject which is dealt with a lot in the songs found on this release.

I also have to mention the song, “Life Ain’t No Day on the Beach,” a novelty song that features a reggae beat that’s driven by hard edge guitars that make it work well. The song deals with growing up and having to get a job and losing your free time spent at the beach.

Don’t Kiss Her Face ends on a really strong note with the song, “My Best Friend.” This song is mostly a piano lead ballad except for a controlled rock guitar part that’s also found in it.

This song really let the vocals shine with their passionate words dealing with the lost of a boyfriend because he cheated on you with your best friend, hence the song’s title.

While for the reasons I mentioned in my review this release isn’t a home run for the band, I do think that it should act as a very solid foundation that they can build upon to move their musical career ahead to the next level.