Talking Dreams

Reception

Matt Collar of AllMusic gave a positive review saying "Echosmith's 2013 debut album, Talking Dreams, introduces a group with an unabashedly youthful take on dance-rock — even though their style pays celebratory tribute to '80s pop music. A band composed of the four Sierota siblings, the California-based Echosmith includes lead singer Sydney, guitarist/vocalist Jamie, bassist/vocalist Noah, and drummer Graham. Working with producer Mike Elizondo and songwriter Jeffery David, the band's freshman effort is impressively filled out with radio-ready songs that combine U2's chiming guitars, Fleetwood Mac's harmonies, and Killers-style neo-new wave production. In that sense, Echosmith will also draw favorable comparisons to such similarly inclined acts as Paramore, Kitten, and Ireland's Two Door Cinema Club. Cuts like the romantic title track, the sparkling "Let's Love", and the bubbly "Come with Me" are all infectious and smartly produced, and tend to stick in your head long after the album ends. There is a brilliant lightness to these songs — nothing ever feels too thought-out. While this doesn't lend a ton of depth to the album, with the members of Echosmith barely in their twenties and lead singer Sydney just seventeen, it only seems logical to assume that there's room for growth. And based on Talking Dreams, that growth will be a pleasure to witness".

By contrast, Daniel Bromfield of the Daily Emerald criticized both the album and the band itself as lacking originality, declaring that they were the point where the phrase "indie" was "another meaningless marketing word like "all natural"". He said, "This is "indie pop" at its most anonymous, a mishmash of the tricks that made their stylistic predecessors click with audiences." While he admitted that "the formula the band works under can be done right and has been by quite a few bands", he remarked that "Echosmith possesses exactly zero qualities that elevate them above the rest of the pack" and that their lyrics were subpar, saying that most of the songs incorporated overused imagery, while some "are just plain awful." He notes that "Cool Kids" would have been the best track of the album were it not for "its cringe-worthy chorus of "I wish that I could be like the cool kids/Because all the cool kids seem to fit in.", saying that the line was "terribly ironic" because "Echosmith has already fit in. But the cool kids are the ones that came before them, and Echosmith merely follow in their wake, trying to look and talk and think exactly like them. They only fit in because it’s what everyone else in their social current does."

Michael Cragg of The Guardian also criticized the album as "catchy but characterless". He notes that the band makes "the kind of polished, laser-guided indie pop that sounds all too familiar", saying that "March Into the Sun", "Bright", and "Come Together" are inspired by other artists, "while the rest congeals into a primary-coloured clump of advert-friendly, frustratingly anonymous background music". "Cool Kids", however, was noted as "the obvious standout". He wrote that the song's "gold-plated chorus is good enough to make you ignore the clunky, straight-to-DVD teen film lyrics".

Track listing

Credits