MusicalGraffiti.com


by Jordan Stewart

Ten Mile Tide is a 6 piece out of San Francisco California. The band is led by two identical twins, Jason and Justin Munning, who share guitar duties and have been playing together through various incarnations of the band.

To describe their sound, one could reference many groove-oriented American bands, but they stand apart for a few reasons. For starters, they keep it simple and melodic. Too many feel-good accoustic bands try to layer every part they can imagine into their songs (are you listening Dave Matthews), and forget that the groove is the key to this music. Now not to slight Mr. Matthews entirely, but his later stuff is losing the sunny smile-inducing groove that was his bread and butter in the first place. TMT has not fallen into this trap yet, as the tracks on Flow will attest.

The signature of TMT is the expert playing, and more importantly, appropriate playing that allows the groove, melody and individual musicianship to shine through. The results are evident. Even with two guitars, there is no overplaying or fighting for space on these tracks, another trap that they tastefully avoid. The greatest accomplishment of these elements is the space they create for the piano and violin - the highlights of the group. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, these two lead instruments dance around each other and never step on each other's toes. This brings us to the vocals. Mazzoni has a layed back style that brings to mind Cat Stevens (eerily at times). You can almost see him smiling as he lays down the vocal tracks and this sums up the appeal of TMT in general.

The songs on Flow alternate between summer festival dance numbers and beautiful layed back soundscapes. The band's press kit suggests "Blue and Sudden" as the lead single with "San Francisco" and "Roll the Top Down" as follow-ups. These song titles tell you more about the band's sound and attitude than I could in 2 pages of description. However, I would argue that, while "Blue and Sudden" is an obvious single, there is a song called "The Other Girl" on Flow that is equally strong.


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