Come to think of it, not many Swiss indie rock bands come to mind. Certainly, I’d not heard of Ventura (Philippe Henchoz, Mike Bedelek and Diego Goerhing) before and if I hadn’t known better then I would have assumed that they were from the good old USA.
All the genre hallmarks of an American indie rock band are there. You don’t get far without getting hit with the power chords, for example. Likewise, the vocals are always infused with that moody intensity and the lyrics squeeze in the kind of nihilism (most prominent in “I Quite Like It Here”) that should go down well with the disenchanted youth of the world. However, there’s a bit more style than the norm on show but, on the minus side, there is no great musical variety either with too many songs sounding much the same with maxed out guitars often being used as a substitute for invention (such as on “We Kill For Love”).
The album is well recorded and well played but it just seems to lack any sort of passion or even a direction. Another case of being too busy being cool to actually care, perhaps? At the end of the day, this album just left me cold.