by Dave White, Face Magazine, 1.1.03

Relishgruv is very close to living our inner VH-1, where we demand happy pearly white performances and pray that they're close to knocking each other's teeth out backstage. Their new EP, Memorandum, never implies that there is strife in Relishville, but there emanates a fresh tension, whether it's from gigging out or getting along.

The years have paid off: they have a fan base, and a web site, and contacts, and Bob Ludwig said this, and The Phoenix said that, blah, blah, blah, etc. This is all evident on "Alice," a reflection on whether being comfortable as an individual is as rewarding as maturing together as a unit: "If I diffuse the bombs that I've dropped along my way/ If I could, I wouldn't change a thing."

It seems songwriter/singer Andi and band mates Chris, Mitch and Andrew have presented each other with an ultimatum and have chosen to continue without celebrating their cozy Portland niche. Instead, they are declaring that they have found themselves as a band, a glorious place for artists to be. With Jon Wyman at his engineering best, this teaser is a four-song step up from past Relishgruv endeavors and a hint of great things to come.

Where Andi Fawcett has found herself, Mitch Alden is still looking. He can get gigs at venues where club owners would have thumbed their noses at Rustic Overtones. He can maintain various incarnations of the same band all over New England, use them when as schedule demands, and convince them all to play the same CD release party for enough gas money home and a few brews. He can attract a crowd at his shows, even if the version of Now-is-Now is just the creator himself belting it out with an acoustic guitar and a back log of old pop standards and Mitch-originals. He'll travel all over the place to do a 10-minute bit for community college radio and sneak a pick-up gig at a seacoast hole-in-the-wall along the way just in case Travolta might be on vacation. He also, so I've heard, is able to keep a day job. Like Clark Kent, I assume he's in a downtown cubicle with his eyes fixed on a computer screen entering data, and his mind contemplating the superhero all the other Portland bands consider him to be. Yes, Mitch will even play a phone booth.

His new effort, Transitions, is a record of introspection and study in duality circa 1992, when rock stars crooned of aching love and the misunderstood absence of it: No one loves me, because no one gets me, chorus, guitar solo, chorus, out. This two-faced persona, grubby and unshaven with clove cigarettes on the outside, and sensitive Chandler and Joey on the inside, worked for awhile but got tired fast.

Mitch's sorrow is like most in this genre: not being able to grasp at those things you think will make you happy or you got what you wanted and you found out it sucked. Either way, he has learned from his predecessor's mistakes and got his foot off the monitor, abandoned the rock pose, and ditched the apathy to create a montage of rock stylings that is from Gin Blossoms to Creed and Sheryl Crow to STP. "Find a friend/To recognize my insecurities/Why else would I put my faith in thee?" is a typical free-form thought on this record and, well, somewhat elusive in the context of a pop number.

The album cover suggests that the music might have an ethereal, sort of, Prince-like, omniscient vibe, while the title suggests change or the movement from one state of being to another. That's a bit much to take on a record that not only begs for top-forty airplay, it tributes some of the best top-ten hitters. That duality, though, is Mitch's Achilles' Heel: brooding on the inside and wanting to be taken seriously as a poet via incense and sitar, but bouncing around on stage and encouraging his audience to do the pogo through a loaded strat. The result is a frustrating nine-song affair that leaves your toes tired from tapping and your brain craving George Harrison.

Where Relishgruv finds success by way of self-discovery, Transitions attempts to ask its audience to do the searching, only to find that it's written in a language only Mitch can understand.

Dave White is a freelance writer for Face Magazine, 207-288-4500, mail@facemag.com.