Lenses Alien
Something about the opening track on this album brings to mind screamo stalwarts Thursday's "War All the Time." Of course CEG's song goes on to spin out into indie rock goodness beyond the walls of that other song, but it is hard to get past the first impression that this album is going to foretell the second coming of the emo train. Leave it to the cool indie band to bring back something that originally outlived its welcome (i.e. short-shorts on dudes, mustaches and legwarmers) and make it happenin' again. I mean there is a certain debt to be paid here to bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and the like, with their spiraling orchestration, a great rhythm section, loud/soft dynamic, complicated song structures and even some of the vocal stylings. Whatever the comparison, these guys don't do anything the easy way. They're a guitar, drums and bass band at their core, but every manner of instrument wends its way through their songs. But their mostly subtle inclusion doesn't feel gimmicky like it does when some other bands use piano or horns or strings -- it just kind of adds to the pastiche and makes the overall sound even fuller than it would otherwise be. Like most albums that include all sorts of time signature changes and difficult lyrics and dramatic ups and downs, this album didn't fully capture my brain on the first run through. But now with multiple listens, this is quickly becoming one of my favorites of 2011. |
Why There Are Mountains
This is one lousy band name. Luckily their
music, a weird mix of CaP'n Jazz,
Pavement and various noise bands
like Single Frame and even,
in a really oddball way, The
Replacements, sounds so much like a mixture of bands that
it ends up sounding like none of them. That said, they don't
believe in the chorus verse chorus thing, and there are a lot
of breakdowns as their spastic goodness tends to spill all over
the place. An enticing debut album for an unsigned band, each
listen (partly because of the songs' formless nature) opens
new windows of fun. Was that a horn I heard? |
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