Review Summary: None of the regular stuff: rough-rooted hovering rock tunes with post-punk, ethereal art-rock and progressive influences, ready to dream-pop-boost you by outstanding songwriting, witty-tricky lyrics and a charismatic voice to be unforgotten!
If you're looking for another generic usual suspect of the common indie scene, skip this - if you're willing for a highly overseen, underrated underground band giving innovative light and new yet mature angles to the "indie" genre: This is the review of your next record, acquiesce in the fact you're not the first person to discover this! From European point of view, having discovered these guys on their last European tour '09 and since that impressed and steady for their release, I can't understand the prevailing current trend in the U.S. of looking for "crazy new" sounds from overseas. Why looking abroad for deep arts, when this L.A. band could be the next overseen gem.
Tinged with post-punk, art-rock and progressive influences ALSO deliver an outstanding indie-rock album, every professional writer excluding this in their reports or declining the record should be really ashamed of his manipulability and bandwagon-nature. Music wasn't surely invented in the noughties, which is clearly represented in the roots of this band, there is undeniably a lot of ethereal classy 80s alternative post punk in their music, but it is brought together
well, unpretentiously and peculiarly - the good, healthy pinch of peculiarity.
When some "The National" comparisons come by nature, these guys have not been wavering as they have nearly been out for about as long as The National, just as overseen as the NYC-based mellow rockers in their early days. There is a common ground to wallow on, but enough disparity: Conrad's voice easily outdoes the National singer, his voice hints to Jeff Buckley or Morrissey and also croons melancholically like classic tunesmiths of woe, say Scott Walker or Mark Kozelek? Memorable? Definitely,his fogged and philosophically timeless words help absorbing. "When did you pack up the dream? And since then how has it been? You seem more at ease or is that the look of empty?"
Musically ALSO can hit it really hard, rough rock meeting an eerie and moonlit soundscape that at the same time could be right out of the garage, on the other hand they are never reluctant to write a great tune. "So Long" is, as Americans would think "Britpop", to me it's poetic alt rock offering a width and dimension to dream away. There is reminiscences of ethereal and somber post-punkers such as The Church, Echo and the Bunnymen or for big-name-catchers Joy Division, but it's always left rough, essential and guitar-based, them being a three-piece, in patches you will hear underlying keys.
At last there is a diversity of music which impedes labelling them: there is so much running by (I agree to aforementioned reviews). There are art-rock-loaded, psychedelic trips as on "Unloaded" or jazzy "Aim High", progressive moments of Flaming Lips or dream-
pop as Deerhunter are subliminal to tracks like "Frost" or "Wilshire Boulevard", taken off by a classic hummable early-era Radiohead, speaking The Bends. First and foremost, there is classy songwriting and musicianship, and even if you dislike them (or too deafened to hear their unique creativity) you'll findyourself grant and groan: What a hell of a drummer!!!
ALSO are a band for thinkers and nothing for the square ear:
they challenge as one needs to have a certain background to decode their condensed hyms, which is refreshing. There's so much potential in this, that it's hard to believe they are yet so overseen. Everybody who doesn't know what I am talking about should go ahead, research about them and get some music in their players
as soon as possible. It is profound without being weepy, buoyant without drifting heroically.
My record of the year so far! Still shaking my head they aren't way bigger, this is all a classy music-aficionado girl like me can remark. "I Love You" is such a roaring, stirring and passionate song that you will sooner or later tap your forehead for not having discovered this earlier. So be open and be blown away for a distinctive distribution to the indie-genre of peculiar, individual ways.
