Vary Lumar

The music of Waiting Room is spiritually healing as well as dynamically strong. Waiting Room, shows influences of punk-rock, hypnotic new wave, modern rock, and a cap full of funk-influenced pop. (www.absolutepunk.net 2008) - absolutepunk.net

Paul De Pasquale, Rob Laff, Rob Fusco and Ben Case of Vary Lumar create music that straddles genres comfortably, maintaining a roughness to their sound, leaving it open to exciting posasibility. Though the lyrics sometimes take a backseat to the vocals and instrumentation, the music has enough variety to hold the listener’s interest with everything from punk rock to post-rock and hints of pop.

Waiting Room begins with a strong track, “Next Step.” Layered with an interesting beat, the track highlights De Pasquale’s voice and relatively soft instrumentation while building towards a climax. Driving beats, distorted guitars and fuzzed out vocals feature in most of the songs,adapting to fit the band’s diverse sound. Some of the stand out tracks include “Terminal,” the guitar heavy “Inside Greenwich Palace,” the instrumental “Ataraxia” and the epic “Lost Parade.”

From De Pasquale’s Thom Yorke-esque crooning on the fifth song, “Cosmopolitic,” to the “Paranoid Android” inspired changes in tempo in several tracks, it’s apparent that Radiohead has left a very big impression on Vary Lumar, though there is still an enormous gapbetween the two bands.

Vary Lumar seem to draw from a wider range of influences. The instrumentation in “Ataraxia” sounds like the Doves’ Lost Souls while “Great Change” has definite similarities to Explosions in the Sky’s post-rock sound. Some of the other tracks have echoes of British bands Travis (“Nothing Left”), Coldplay (“Thoroughfare Vexation”) and Muse (“Waiting Room”).

Though there are echoes of greater bands, Vary Lumar seem on their way to developing their own unique, versatile sound led by De Pasquale’s dependable voice. (Swoom Records)

-Priyanka Boghani - Northeast Performer Magazine

Vary Lumar has an incredibly affable sound that is simultaneously fun and cathartic. The band Has enough Creativity to envy then and enough imperfections to root from them. (Fillmore Slim, Issue 262, June 2006) - The Noise (Boston)