Review: The Smallest Creature “Enchanting”

The Smallest Creature are set to pull the trigger on their debut album and fire it off into the public square. This alternative rock three piece call the island paradise of Cyprus home, and from this peaceful, idyllic atmosphere comes appropriately dreamy and spaced-out tunes.

Originally starting off in New York in 2007, Stefanos Marinerdes took his demo recordings across the sea to the small Mediterranean island of Cyprus, and there put a band together to get his music down right. If you need comparable touchstones, then you can think along the lines of Radiohead’s “The Bends” or Muse’s “Origin of Symmetry,” but we can’t simply stop there. We must listen to what The Smallest Creature has to say for itself.

On the song ‘Reboot,’ Stefanos creates an ethereal little ditty full of breathing room. Strings evoke a strong sense of melancholy that adds to the ghostly sparseness of the tune as it leads to a dense, near-cacophony, and then back into the quiet forlorn lullaby from whence it arose. The vocals rise to us as if on a distant echoing breeze before they attain full-belted power.

‘Enchanting’, finds the band on good footing in old-fashioned college rock territory with a guitar-focused song that reaches for the stratosphere. “Enchanting” will be released independently in the very near future as it receives its final production polish up.

‘Spring’ demonstrates the bands comfort with straddling the line between alternative rock and louder, noisier hard rock. Stefanos gives us a circular riff on the acoustic guitar played over a two note bass line right up until the chorus hits, nearly a minute in, at which point ‘Spring’ blooms in electrical mayhem. It quiets down once more, but once the silence has been shattered you can never go entirely back. The drums continue to play and the electric guitar, although no longer playing a riff, continues to nervously pace the background of the song like a caged panther, squeaking and fretting as if afraid it won’t be allowed to ever again snarl in the face of prey, which it soon does, building again to a big rousing double chorus.

Incidental to all this, the world’s smallest known mammal, not smallest creature per se, but the smallest of the furry lactating variety can be found on The Smallest Creature’s home island of Cyprus. I’m not saying the band is named after the wee Etruscan Shrew, but I make mention of it because it is a dang adorable little fellow. Sure, in a world of sleek sexy leopards sprinting across the land it ain’t much to write home about, but there’s something to be said for slipping in under the radar like the one and only The Smallest Creature can.