After Edmund is a group of Georgia-based music-school buddies who decided to take their name from the primary source of “literary” Christian band names—C.S. Lewis. Their fantastical press release describes a band that ponders things like “facilitating better art,” and proceeds to unironically compare them to Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Wilco, Keane, the Foo Fighters, and Muse. Providing its usual voice of reason and sharp critical judgment, the Christian music press described Hello as “groundbreaking” and “wave-making.” Of course, this grandiose exaggeration sets any realistic critic up for an avalanche of balloon-bursting one-liners, so I figured it only fair to give this record an exceptionally long time to sink in.

After Edmund
Hello
Rating: 4.7/10
Slanted Records

Hello is only groundbreaking in the sense that the Christian music demographic may not have heard this particular sound—sturdy mainstream rock with British affections—before. But everyone else has. We’ve heard Muse use that rotating synth arpeggio that opens “Thank God” and My Chemical Romance do that roaring, chromatic chord progression and ripping, Queen-esque guitar solo in “Clouds.” Even the more interesting bits of these songs feels like a less-inspired imitation of something that’s already come and gone, and none of them add up to anything the least bit exciting. It doesn’t even really work as top-speed highway rock (yes, I tried it).

There are two truly good minutes of good music on this album, and they come in the form of the piano interlude “Go Oboe!”—a classical sonata imitation that showcases one of After Edmund’s individual talents. The rest is—in the words of the Walter Kirn line that I will quote for the rest of my natural life if necessary—“skillful, but somehow not convincing.”