The Golden Path is an indie rock quartet based in the San Francisco Bay area. The band consists of Ed Garcia (drums), Barbara Golden (keyboards, vocals) and Adam Windham (bass guitar, vocals) joining the founding member Richard H Phillips (guitars, vocals) who decided to replace his bedroom and sampled instruments with a studio and real players.
This self-titled offering is their debut CD and all the songs are written by Richard and the CD artwork gave me no clue what I was going to be getting — I was almost expecting Buddhist chanting! It starts with the track “One and One” which launches you straight into the grunge sounds that keep on throughout the CD. It’s quite reminiscent of the 90s Nirvana style although the track “Be Gone” sounded like a Morrissey song and “The Ritual” made me think of REM. There’s a nice mix throughout the CD of different vocals which keeps the sound fresh despite the feel of some of the tracks being a bit samey — there are also some nice bits of work instrumentally. There are some nice backing vocals although there are some tracks that I think could use more backing vocals — ironically the song “I’m Alone” is one, but maybe that’s the point!
Overall the quality of the CD is good with a good mix of instruments. The whole thing has a heavy grunge feel so I imagine anyone into that will love this
Written by Louisely D’Amour
[Rating: 4/5]