The Workers

Dan Greenwald and The Workers boast about already being laden with prestigious accolades which verify their undoubted quality, particularly within their New York City borough of Queens. Well, their latest album, Totem, applies simple, melodic acoustic alternative rock that sounds like something steeped in the counterculture of another juicy chunk of The Big Apple – Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and its world-renowned artist circuit.

A mixture of intricate, multi-layered instrumentation and Dan Greenwald’s slightly androgynous, impassive vocal delivery offers minimal complexity to already uncomplicated and somewhat repetitious lyricism in this three-track EP.

Death Race isn’t as gory as it sounds – well, I suppose it depends on how you view the many tribulations of a New Yorkian rush hour. Greenwald copes with it entirely passively hoping to avoid a road rage confrontation or a fatal tragedy. Featuring a catchy chorus and melody, Death Race sounds a lot like a weary testament to the sheer toxicity of urban city living. Usually, this theme is handled with malice aforethought, so it makes a pleasant change that Greenwald adds a modicum of causticness to the subject matter.

Boomerang is the slowest and calmest song on the three-track album. Everything seems languid and whiny – while Death Race wasn’t exactly an uptempo headbanger, Boomerang out-depresses it, from the mixture of the crooner’s unstrained vocal range and basic, children’s rhyme-esque rhythmical flow to the lamenting slides of the pedal steels.

Finally, Big Time, whilst musically brighter than the previous songs, is a tale of an agonising relationship in Greenwald’s life. Here, the structure of the track enjoys dramatic changes in tempo and key midway through on the bridge as if to hit home the message.