Photo by: courtesty of MySpace Music

Pop- rock band nelo released its debut album last week. It is a better than expected release for a band that has gained its fan base from MySpace surfers.

Nelo’s sound is original enough to merit a listen. It is a little jazzy, a little sassy and definitely going to make an appearance in popular music before long.

The lead single, “You Don’t Know,” opens with a few measures of swing-style trumpet before picking up with pop-like vocals.

The fusion of instruments has an interesting effect. It demonstrates that this band knows its stuff…musically, at least. The question is really about popularity.

Can a band with the talent get original enough to make it in today’s music scene?

The album opens with “All Gone to Nothing” and “Jumping Bean,” two songs with a bit more of a pure rock style.

The band is finally taking off 10 years after its creation. Some of the band members have known each other since high school.

Ragland picked up a guitar for the first time when he and schoolmates Stephen Goodson (electric guitar), Chris Hill (drums), and David Long (saxophone) started playing together at the University of North Texas in Denton.

The band found their lead singer Reid Umstattd and multi-instrumentalist Mike St. Clair (bass, trumpet, organ, background vocals) around the same time.

Still, the band remained literally unknown, not really a band until August 2005.

They became popular among listeners in Athens, Ga. and were discovered by producer Freddy Flecher.

The band returned to hometown Austin, Texas to start producing an album and were pleasantly surprised. The band had left behind a demo CD that gained a rolling fan base during the tour, and its MySpace page, started in 2006, streamed 200,000 songs to eager listeners.

The band is comprised of a group of talented musicians with an awesome and original style. Nelo varies its music enough throughout the CD to provide enjoyable listening.

The music ranges from the opening bluegrass chords of “This Time” to the high-school-slow-dance sound of “On Top of Love.”

Nelo is talented and savvy with an impressive dedication to its music.

It is refreshing to see a band that knows how to play more than guitar and drums. The extra instruments give a great twist and make for easy listening.

While its debut album is good, the band has the potential to be great. Only time will tell whether they will live up to that potential or fall once more into obscurity.

In the meantime, the US has some great new music.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 Boones