Album Review
San Francisco's Fourteen formed from the ashes of Shining Scribes, the Bay Area group Fourteen vocalist/songwriter Jeff Salman co-founded with drummer Gabriel Respicio. Despite a strong local following and a full-length CD release, the Scribes fell victim to the thing that so many bands are defenseless against: reality. The Scribes broke up, with both Salman and Respicio moving on to careers in optometry. But the two friends were soon playing music again and, together with bassist Ken Mahru and Respicio's percussionist brother Michael, formed the new band Fourteen. Space, the band's debut EP on their own Spank Records imprint, is a melodic affair with a debt to mid-to-late '90s alternative rock like Collective Soul or the Verve Pipe. Salman's over-emotive vocals dominate most of the material, but "Will You Return" does shift nicely from a brooding, bass-driven beginning into a urgent, harmony-drenched second half, and the plinks of a toy piano save "Little Man" from mundanity. Overall, Space is a solid, if uneventful, debut release that sketches out the path Fourteen will take in the future.
