It's always cool when a label manages to establish a consistent oeuvre early into its existence-- especially when it started out as something very different. Bubble Core, now one of America's finest experimental labels, was originally mistook by many to be a twee label, due to its unfortunate name. Similarly, I originally considered SeeThru Broadcasting "that Brainiac label," since its first two high-profile releases were John Schmersal's album as John Stuart Mill, and Enon's Believo! But several releases later, SeeThru is quickly gaining a reputation as a home for dense, well-orchestrated power-pop.

Gwenmars' Driving a Million plays up the "SeeThru Sound" quite nicely. A thick, heavily layered pop record, it comes off a bit like labelmates the Starlight Mints' The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of, except with synths instead of strings. Also, Gwenmars tend to sound quite a bit darker than the Starlight Mints; Driving a Million has some moments that are pretty damned sonically oppressive. For the most part, however, the album retains a nice balance of noise and melody.

"Neon Tom," one of the album's standout tracks manages punchy poppiness without slipping into weak attempts at humor. Heavily fuzzed-out guitar, synthesizers, and crisp snare drums complement cool-named singer Mike Thrasher's slightly raspy, new wave-inflected voice perfectly. Thrasher's father used to front the Alabama country/gospel band the Thrasher Brothers, but listening to Driving a Million makes it hard to believe that a member of the Thrasher clan could effectively lend his vocal talents to anything other than this pop/new wave blend that this younger Thrasher seems so well suited for.

Though much of Driving a Million rides along on a similar, slightly heavy new wave pop groove like "Neon Tom," it's the subtle lapses into more diverse sounds that are perhaps the record's most welcome aspect. "She Hung the Moon" ends with a great flourish of ethereal backwards guitar;"Radio Gun" is broken up by brief breaks into unaccompanied vocals and instrumental solos. While a wall of distorted guitars and synths lends Driving a Million its signature sound, it's the occasional breaks from this onslaught that constitute some of its best tracks.

But Driving a Million is not a uniformly awesome experience. Gwenmars toured with Filter at one point, and it seems like they never quite got the quasi-industrial thing out of their systems. On "Venus," Thrasher spits barely-tolerable lyrics about love and pain while donning a "tortured" vocal inflection. Not cool. An even more unpardonable sin comes with "Hurry Up," one of eight bazillion songs to utilize one of the most shamelessly overused chord progressions in rock. This would be more forgivable if the band attempted to do something creative with it; instead, they basically let the song write itself out of remnants of past unoriginal rock songs.

If you can get past the weak points, which is not always easy, Driving a Million is a pretty rewarding experience. Gwenmars' music is chock full of inherent charm, and the band themselves do a pretty damned good job of utilizing this aspect. If Mike Thrasher could just exorcise these annoying traces of bad industrial and cheap alternative, Gwenmars could go on to be pretty damned great. And the fact that he managed to overcome a family history in country and suggests that he may indeed have a very bright future ahead of him.

-Matt LeMay