Always so many reviews to write, and we've pretty much saved the best for last, it's the night before the list, and we've got a date with the Christian Mistress!! So stoked on this, the second strike of instantly memorable, uniquely atmospheric, old school galloping trad metal greatness from these Olympia, WA gods - and, ahem, goddess!
We at Aquarius - and many of you, we know - can be considered Christian Mistress early adopters. We boldly made their debut album Agony & Opium a Record Of The Week back when it came out in August, 2010, after all. Joining the chorus of such fans as Fenriz of Darkthrone, and the guys in Slough Feg, we sang their praises to the skies. Needless to say, this new full-length, a year and a half later, is eagerly anticipated. And being released on Relapse, is bound to get a wider audience, which is quite deserved. Having seen 'em slaying live, every time they've come to town, we've heard a few of these songs already and that further whetted our appetite for this album...we didn't know if they could top their debut, but we think they maybe just did!
Analog-recorded at Louder Studios by Tim Green of The Fucking Champs, Possession offers up nine new tracks of Christian Mistress' classic sounding riffing and rippage, inspired by '70s Priest, the toughest NWOBHM (Diamond Head, Angel Witch), and early '80s speedmetal. Songs full of exquisite shred, catchy choruses, doomed-out power, acoustic adornment, and most significantly, such compelling melodic singing. While the dual guitarists are whizzes for sure, throwing out licks in passing that lesser bands might base whole songs around, the band's main attraction remains singer Christine Davis, who as we have said before, possesses a serious VOICE. Charismatic, commanding, husky, raw, melancholic. It's the X-factor that makes CM's music sound so special, so timeless, even transcendent. A crucial component to these carefully crafted songs, which range from rapidfire off-the-rails rockin' to utterly emotive & epic. CM are so totally metal - rooted in the genre's finest traditions - yet their songwriting is pop enough underneath it all for anyone to enjoy, who likes good, real rock music.
So the deal obviously is, those of you already into CM are getting this for sure; but folks who haven't checked 'em out, please do, even if you're not a metal "regular", particularly of the old school variety. When we made their first album Record Of The Week we said something like, if you were gonna buy just one metal album this year, make it this one, and while of course we think you should be buying MORE than one metal album a year (that's ridiculous!!!), put this new CM at the top of your list. It's definitely a contender for best heavy metal album of 2012; at least, there's so many songs here, like "Hunted Haunted" and "Black To Gold" and their cover of obscure '80s Swedish doomsters Faith's "Possession", for instance, that we just can't stop spinning over and over and over. Good thing this is the last review we've got to finish before the list...
Along with the Marion Brown disc highlighted last list, and the Howard Roberts we highlighted 2 lists ago, here's another brand new & quite welcome entry in this fine series of 2-on-1 Impulse! label reissues. And one that we were especially thrilled to see, as we love love love Alice Coltrane, and these two albums of hers in particular. This twofer contains Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969), which we've reviewed on vinyl but have never had on cd before, and also another one of our all-time astral Alice C. faves, World Galaxy (1972), which we have stocked on cd before some years ago, but never reviewed, because it was only available as an expensive Japan-only import. And so if you like avant jazz, if you like cosmic music, if you like Alice Coltrane, this is an essential.
The one we hadn't previously reviewed, World Galaxy, we'll cover first. Credited on the colorfully Peter Max designed cover to "Alice Coltrane With Strings", that's what sets this one apart. Massive, sweeping strings, sometimes subject to subtle tape manipulation, that has this somehow reminding us of Super Ae by the Boredoms (or rather, the other way around)! For this record, Alice Coltrane's trademark harp (as well as her piano, electric organ, and tamboura) was joined by a 15-person string section, including violinist LeRoy Jenkins, who also solos. Other personnel: Reggie Workman on bass, Ben Riley on drums, Frank Lowe on saxophone, and Elayne Jones on tympani. And, respected Indian guru Swami Satchidananda provides a recitation on the subject of love as part of this album's final track, a heartfelt version of John Coltrane's classic "A Love Supreme". The album also begins with a tune closely associated with Alice Coltrane's late husband, "My Favorite Things". The remaining four compositions featured are Alice Coltrane originals, given the "With Strings" treatment, and all are majestic, beautiful, the album sounding like some very spiritual, avantgarde soundtrack music, with shimmering melodies carried aloft by the strings, intertwined and intercut with Eastern-sounding zing and twang and bass drone and keyboard burble, all the layers coming together with passion and power. A unique item in the Alice Coltrane discography for sure, and one of our favorites for that. (Well, her great Universal Consciousness employed strings too, but this takes it to another level.)
And then here's what we enthusiastically had to say about Huntington Ashram Monastery when we first reviewed the reissued vinyl version:
This is one of those records that was nearly impossible to track down for years, so we are beyond happy for this to finally surface. Recorded in 1969 right after her great debut, A Monastic Trio, Huntington Ashram Monastery is an album that ranks right near the top of the amazing legacy of music that Alice Coltrane left us. Playing piano and wielding her majestical (majestic + magical!) harp in a magnificent trio that featured Ron Carter on bass and the wonderful and sadly recently passed Rashied Ali on drums and percussion. So much thought, love and devotion was put into every single note that Alice Coltrane recorded, and Huntington Ashram Monastery is such utter proof of that. No wasted notes, or throwaway moments. You can't lay the needle down on these grooves and not be moved and transported to another plane of consciousness. This is truly sacred, essential and transcendent music. Beyond recommended!
So, put these two together, as they have here, and that's a disc that's not just recommended, it's pretty much required. However, be aware, a nice warm layer of surface tape hiss from the original analog source is particularly present on the Huntington Ashram Monastery half of this twofer, not that we mind.
It's a bleak world for HTRK, as tragedy and death has surrounded this outfit which has only been around for a couple of years. In 2010, the band's bassist Sean Stewart committed suicide and the producer of their haunted album Marry Me Tonight, Rowland S. Howard died of cancer a year earlier. All of these elements make a connection to The Birthday Party almost inevitable, especially given their historical mirroring in relocation from Melbourne to Berlin and the manifestation of the id through a very raw sound. But where The Birthday Party was an expression of violence, HTRK are in constant search of desire, occasionally finding it only to have it frustratingly fizzle out before anything ecstatic can be achieved. As a result, HTRK's sensual bleariness is in an emotional feedback loop that never can spiral beyond the longing for sex, love, a relationship, etc, without anything ever attained. HTRK's existential portraits of being trapped by one's own desires are in direct opposition to the hedonism found in most electronica. Here on Work (Work, Work), the band parallels some of the horror-affected reverberation of the flash-in-the-pan Witch House crowd; but instead of drawing on unremembered memories of the forgotten '80s, HTRK has profound pain to draw upon... and they want their audience to feel that too.
The band had been shifting their sound even before Stewart's death, with a greater reliance on electronics and subharmonic tones girding the spindly guitar work from Nigel Yang and the self-composed breathiness of Jonnine Standish. They were moving away from the rock trio and towards a miasma of voice, guitar, bass, and electronics with boundaries between these sounds far more permeable. The closest references to HTRK's sound would be Ike Yard and Dome, although HTRK are much more interested in building tension with their teasing melodicism through their droning electronics. The first track on the album features a weird collage that Stewart had made of late nite TV sex ads in Berlin amidst slow-motion sighs caught in a half-melodic drone and crawling drum machine pulse. "Eat Yr Heart" ramps a quarter-speed Giorgio Moroder sequence above heroin paced rhythm with Jonnine crooning a sultry melody counterpointed by breathy exhalations. Sexually charged yes, but more of a downward spiral into dejection rather than release. "Poison" is more in keeping with the bass and guitar structures found on Marry Me Tonight, with Sean Stewart's bass clearly present next to the twilight flickering drone-riffs from Yang. "Body Double" overhauls Suicide's classic sound of metallic synth / drum interplay with undulating melodies that stretch into a magnificent coda of cascading melancholy for what amounts to a masterful album. Highly recommended.
A self-taught musician with a keen understanding of electronic circuits, F.C. Judd published the first of 11 books on the nascent field of electronic music in 1954. This was a few years before the BBC founded its Radiophonic Workshop, and documentation exists that Judd and the Workshop's Daphne Oram were in communication with each other. That said, Judd might have counted amongst the hundreds of amateur enthusiasts who tinkered in garages, basements, attics, and sheds throughout the UK (and beyond for that matter!); but his anonymity was not for a lack of trying, as he did publish those 11 books, founded the Amateur Tape Recording magazine (with a run from 1959-1967), and funded a couple of record labels, all in the pursuit of disseminating experimental tape music to a wider audience. Many of those singles did get bundled by Studio G for library use (and subsequently, one of those tracks made it onto the G-Spots compilation from the Studio G archives, curated by Trunk Records), and Judd did create the electronic sound design for the children's sci-fi puppet show Space Patrol in 1963.
Judd's late '50s / early '60s studio featured various oscillators, tape decks, and filters alongside a primitive drum machine and an experimental synthesizer, both of his own design; and he rendered an eerie array of vibrations and electronic plonk, coupled with a rough-cut / hand-spun approach to tape edits and loops. Judd varied from the spookily abstract paralleling (and predating) the sound design from the Forbidden Planet and Dr. Who soundtracks; and some delightfully playful electronic poptunes looking forward to Joe Meek's gleeful electronics as The Blue Men. Interspersed throughout the electronics and tape experiments, Judd offers up his own thoughts on the tracks themselves with a dry sense of humor tossing about explanatory definitions of basic musique concrete techniques and various electronic circuits. A fantastic and compelling document of the earliest and nearly forgotten pioneers of British electronic music, to which Judd himself said it best: "Musique Concrete is fascinating!"
We rarely get hate mail, but when we do, it's usually pretty good. And our positive review of Morbid Angel's most recent record, Illud Divinum Insanus, elicited some of the best hate mail ever. We were accused, among other things, of being poseurs, of being the whole problem with San Francisco, and why no one wants to live here, and of liking that Morbid Angel record ironically (all somehow connected). We'd like to believe none of that is true, especially the part about our ironic love of that Morbid Angel album. As long time readers of the aQ list must certainly know by now, we tend to love lots of ridiculous, crazy, stupid, demented shit, and if anything qualified as all of those, it was Illud Divinum Insanus. Have a look at that review if you missed it the first time, and you can see what all the hubbub was about. Sure that record had some classic death metal, but it also had some weird nineties style industrialisms, and some (sort of) rapping. Even the folks here that hated that record, were perversely obsessed with it. And the folks who loved it were also perversely obsessed with it, and even THOSE folks found at least one of the tracks nearly impossible to like. So really, it came as no surprise that the whole record was due for a double disc remix, with all the tracks redone, remixed, reimagined and reworked by all manner of industrial / techno musicians / producers. And again, the haters were appalled, but strangely intrigued, and the rest of us, well, we were pushing it for Record Of The Week, cuz really, this is some Judgement Night style shit, a maybe bad idea pushed about as far as it could go, and in the process, becoming something strangely cool, and surprisingly listenable (for some of us, at least).
So yeah, the vestiges of the originals are nearly wiped completely away on most of these tracks, and what's left is usually just a riff, or only the vocals, the originals totally transformed into pounding gabber, or martial industrial, or creepy electronica, or glitched out weirdness, the sound definitely heavily nineties, hard to avoid when the core of the sound is electronica/industrial crossed with metal guitars, the Ministry vibe looms large, but somehow, these songs work better as nineties industrial metal jams than death metal, especially the more problematic tracks like "Too Extreme". No matter what, or how much, we write, most haters will not be swayed, which is totally fine, but for folks into the WAY weirder/demented side of metal, or who dig nineties industrial metal, or even folks just into the whole traffic accident can't look away vibe of this ridiculous release, this is pretty fucking cool/weird. And if it wasn't actually a Morbid Angel record, and was instead just some super fucked up comp of metal industrial, we imagine lots of folks might be a little obsessed. Cuz lots of this is really fucking cool.
Igorrr (1/2 of aQ faves Whourkr) turn their track into a dizzying chopped up, head spinning collage of stuttering guitars and processed riffs, the sound blenderized and junglized and blasted into a squall of fractured melodies and skittery beats, a track then sounds like it could have come off the Igorrr record proper. The Laibach remix is incredible, adding harpsichord, flutes, swooping backwards guitars, and the vox from the original into a dizzying psychedelic Teutonic pound that KILLS. cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy takes his track and adds a tolling bell, chanted vox, squiggly sci-fi effects, and transforms it into a weirdly cinematic string laden dirge. Tek-One adds thick rib cage rattling bass warble for a bad ass death metaldubstep mash-up, DJ Ruffneck goes full on gabber, pounding and relentless, laced with shards of guitar solos from the original, Black Lung takes the original and blurs it into a murky smear, and spreads that out beneath a heavy house music churn, while Mondkopf buries the original in squelches and low end buzz, turning it into a lurching low end creep, Scott Brown turns his track into full on HI-NRG rave, which is hilarious, but kind of awesome, Fixhead offers up another crazy head spinning heavy dubstep workout, we could go on and on, but they're all pretty great, and weird, and while some are dumb and fun, others are dark and fucked up and fierce, others still tripped out and confusional. Folks who hated the original, and who were offended by our UN-ironic love of that record (we're not poseurs dude - we're TOO EXTREME!!) will most definitely want to steer WELL clear of this monstrosity, but for everyone else, we have to say, we've been listening to this like crazy, nonstop, and that shows no sign of changing any time soon, which always the real measure of a record. In fact, folks who hated Illud Divinum Insanus for being a mockery of a Morbid Angel album, might be able to like this, since it's not even pretending to be death metal.
Includes a download coupon for even MORE remixes, not included on the discs proper.
Previously a quadruple lp, now on double cd in a deluxe oversized package!!
Perhaps the only bright side to the passing of one of the most ambitious but relatively unsung figures in early electronic music, is that the archives of hundreds of reels of unreleased recordings of sound experiments, tape compositions, field recordings, cinematic sound effects and�Musique Concrete are just starting to be released to a wider audience. Young Americans did a stellar job with the first Daphne Oram vinyl overview, Oramics, which was a retrospective of her long and varied career from her time as a wartime radio technician to becoming an electronic instrument pioneer and founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Now that her invention, The "Oramics" machine (the first electronic musical instrument designed and built by a woman), has gone on display at the Science Museum in London, Daphne Oram's legacy is finally moving into its rightful place. This deluxe compilation is the first in a planned series of releases that dig deep into Oram's vast recording archive. Painstakingly compiled and restored from over 400 tapes and mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, The Oram Tapes Volume One features 37 previously unheard recordings (a bit less than what was on the vinyl version). While most of the pieces are short, they show a darker and more layered compositional style than what one may be used to from the bigger names of The Radiophonic Workshop. While the typical Workshop compositional bloops and bleeps were often steeped in a science fiction futurity, Oram was more often concerned with the mystery and science of sound composition, and the place where the sounds of machines and nature overlapped. That is probably why her effects reel for the film 2001 sounds more like haunted insects and cathedral-like atmospherics rather than say, robotic whirrs and laser-like phasing. There is a thoughtful and cerebral consideration in her compositions that allows us to imagine and nearly inhabit the world she is building in sound. Quite stunning!
We had never really heard The Spits before. Pretty sure we just assumed they'd be super generic boring punk rock. But one aQ staffer who'd been living in Seattle until recently was shocked that the rest of us had never checked these guys out, and talked them up as being one of his favorite bands, which was enough of a recommendation for us, and holy shit, do these guys rule. This is full length number 5 (we think), all self titled, and all, we presume, packed to overflowing with killer jams that meld Ramones style three chord punk with blown out Devo-style electro-punkpop, and the results are pretty mindblowing, hooks galore, but often buried in murk and buzz, the vocals slipping from a Joey Ramones style yelp to a mush mouthed heavily effected drawl, with even the most straight ahead jams wreathed in weird streaks of processed guitar buzz or twisted electronics, opener, "All I Want" is a pretty perfect pop song, and yeah, total Ramones worship, but the whole track is underpinned by killer sinister sci-fi guitar sounds and lots of buzz and drone, the result is punky pop, but sort of tense and intense. And "My Mess" is all curdled guitar crunch and tripped out doped up vox, wild drumming, and some rad psychedelic effects drenched breakdowns, and while there's not a proper chorus, somehow the whole goddamn song gets stuck in our heads like crazy. Oh and did we mention the bizarre falling apart interlude replete with dialed telephone tones and all the instruments sounding like they're melting before your ears. Then there are jams like "Tomorrow's Children", with muted muddy riffage wrapped around motorik programmed rhythms, and some druggy Hawkwindy vox, with a distinctly electro vibe throughout. We could go on track by track, but it's hardly necessary. 13 tracks, 21 minutes, short sharp, hooky, heavy, buzzy, fuzzy, catchy and totally ruling, these guys might just be our new (old) favorite band!
Welcome to the sensual realm of John Talabot! This Spanish producer has been releasing some of the most ecstatic, hypo-rhythmed, DEEP sampledelic house music going back to the release of his breakout single "Sunshine" in 2009. Some of us around here have been obsessed with the enigmatic producer for a while now and are fully stoked to be sharing fIn, his debut full length with you, our dear customers, on this most holy "list Friday".
Talabot's sound world is a multilayered tapestry of disembodied samples, glistening synths, intricate but organic sound design, and ASS-SHAKING rhythms. To be sure, this is most certainly house music, but his treatment and subversion of the idiosyncratic nature of house music is what draws us in. Because of that, his sound world seems to be entirely his own. He bucks the trends and comes up with some of the most beautifully personal and dreamily hazed out jams we've heard in quite a while.
The second track, "Destiny" featuring another up and coming Spanish producer, Pional on vocals, is a smashing cosmic roller. The verse sung sexy and sweet over lush synth melodies and syncopated marimba notes melting together into a warm cocoon of transcendent SOUND. Bleary eyed and sun addled, the sound is like the come down freefall after an all night beach rave. The joy and release still on the periphery of your consciousness, with the sorrowful realization that the reverie must end, slowly creeping to the forefront. It's somehow simultaneously rapturous and melancholic. "Missing You", a tripped out slow jam is another of our favorite moments on fIN. The drum programming rolling out subtle slowly developing riddims as an otherworldly pitch-fucked "guitar" sample enters on top, reminding us of a more luminous, yet just as haunted Burial. And then some seriously far out, processed into outerspace vocals enter, and the tune just develops into, well, a CHOOOON. Futuristic pop music for sure. The following track, "Last Land" finds Talabot right in his zone, which is arranging samples into impossibly beautiful dance tunes. Starting out with a subtly dubbed out disco break into a gorgeous string / vocal loop the track is a slow burner. Hypnotic and pulsating, the rhythmic texture building into silence! Following this functional breath from the beat, the bass line slowly creeps in and the whole thing swells into an ecstatic drop, the string sample now reconfigured to create an amazing melodic hook. Stunning. The last track, "So Will Be Now", another one featuring the this time pitched down vox of Pional, is a beautifully developed deep and dreamy house cut. The mood is dark and evolving, the vocals acting as a grounding constant as the fuzzed out lush textures and astoundingly psychedelic percussion layering result in dance floor timelessness. You truly want to hold on to this musical moment for eternity.
fIn is most definitely a journey of discovery, and we need not spoil that. It is some of the finest dance music we've heard in ages, on par with The Field's "From Here We Go Sublime"... totally EXQUISITE!
First things first, recommended. Yes, you heard us right!
Ok, like everyone else, after catching an appalling earful of the... errr, flaccid lead-off single trumpeting the return of THE Van Halen WITH David Lee Roth, we were totally gun shy and almost ready to toss the new album in the dumper unseen and unheard, especially after so much drama and so many false starts and empty promises (read: bottles) over the last twenty seven years (!), BUT to honor old allegiances to the genius pre-1985 Van Halen (i.e. before Roth left), we just had to give the new disc a fair spin. So, we did, albeit somewhat gingerly. Needless to say, we skipped right past the lame opening track (the abovementioned "Tattoo"), and kicked things off with "She's The Woman" (a reworked version of a 1976 demo), and... HOLY SHIT... it... really... sounds... and... grooves... like... THEM (circa VHII, Fair Warning, Women And Children First, 1984). Once we recovered from the shock, the goosebumps and glee took over! That song slays like '79 all over again! Really should have been the first single...
Yeah, we know at this point you're probably thinking "what are they thinking?!" Still a bit skeptical, right? Sure, the relationships seem to be business-calculated. Sure a bunch of the songs are based on old demos, and many songs are fundamentally riffin' on archetypes of their various early styles, for instance, the terrific "Stay Frosty" = "Ice Cream Man", but over the majority of this record this all actually works in the favor of the band, and these tunes ultimately reveal themselves to be more than mere sonic nostalgia (and actually the band's practice of reworking old material is nothing new, it was their modus operandi after the first couple years of existence).
But try to block out all the hype, preconceptions, and "Tattoo". Forget the embarrassing, drunken EVH YouTube clips. Don't scoff and dismiss before you've given it a listen... or two or three. If you like/love vintage Van Halen, you will be surprised and happy and super stoked to hear that everyone has risen to the challenge. The playing is technically and musically brilliant, and as entertaining and fun as old VH. They're still the mad geniuses expertly disguising themselves as airheads. Meticulously composed, deceptively complex, yet totally on the verge of careening out of control. Eddie in particular sounds absolutely revivified. There's some spine tingling EVH guitar playing going on here. The bongo-Bonzo intricate drumming is unmistakably Alex Van Halen, with his signature snare and cymbal sounds. David Lee Roth's vocal range ain't what it used to be, but it's still plenty there, with authentic deliveries of his usual characterizations, delivered Tarzan-like (we'll forgive/turn a blind eye to his shout-out to Facebook). And what about Wolfgang Van Halen's bass playing? Totally fat. Very solid, and full of Michael Anthony-esque beefy vrroooms and BASS counterpoints. Wolfgang's sound is a little tighter than MA's, and he is really fantastically locked in here. The whole band is really quite on fire and up-to-snuff with their best vintage material throughout A Different Kind Of Truth. Most importantly - because VH were known to record their albums very quickly and quite live - the band sounds rejuvenated without sounding reliant on modern technology (unlike most other reunited rock bands and their love affair with the rhythm grid). The faithful vintage vibe is at many times remarkably fast, heavy and crammed full of mesmerizing riffery from all involved (check out "China Town", "Bullethead", "Outta Space", "Honeybabysweetiedoll", "As Is", and "Big River"). A welcome return to form, as VH was largely devoid of any sense of wild danger or threat of pyrotechnic-wizard combustion during the non-DLR years. Well, it's clear that something has sparked, and the friction makes for some magical chemistry and hard rock firepower channelled through all four players. Really, the only obvious element (and it is a considerable one) that could make this an old VH fan's complete dream come true would be the return of Michael Anthony, but we doubt that'll ever happen since it seems obvious that Wolfie's been groomed to be the VH bassist since he was a tot. He rips on this record though, and his backing vocals are quite satisfactorily in the ballpark of the MA model. And the band IS called Van Halen.
So, there you have it. A major portion of A Different Kind Of Truth fucking smokes! We can only guess that the "Tattoo" single debacle was an ill-timed April fool's joke and/or a poor decision by them. But these guys ain't no dummies, so maybe it was all part of a reverse-psychology master plan - that is, to first deliver what everyone naturally expected from the even-up-til-recently-EVH-trainwreck, and then hot on its heels deliver what everyone hoped for, yet doubted they could ever actually have (i.e. pretty much the rest of the album). Heavy rock comeback of the year! (At least until the Black Sabbath record? Assuming they have Bill Ward. Cuz while we may have been convinced to abide a Michael Anthony-less VH, a Bill Ward-less Sabbath reunion is utterly unacceptable)!
After a handful of killer singles comes the debut from this UK indie pop four piece, and it's just as good as those singles promised. In fact, the A side from the most recent single is included here, described by us in a past review as "total old school urgent post punk jangle pop, sassy female vox, backed up by deep boy background vocals, cool tendrils of psychedelic guitar melody, fuzzy summery pop for sure, rife with all that sixties reverb and echo, but with just a bit of an ominous edge, and a KILLER chorus." And we pretty much assumed that like in most cases, said single would be the best track on the album, but somehow EVERY track here is competing for best track bragging rights. The sound very beholden to pop minimalists that came before, Beat Happening, Velvet Underground, all raw and stripped down, urgent and emotional, but still lush and layered, a little bit dark and depressive, and still shot through with sonic warmth and a hopeful melodicism that will definitely find fans of the current group of sixties girl group and post punk influenced indie poppers like Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Grass Widow as well as fuzzy garage rockers like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees and the rest.
Opener "Found Love In A Graveyard" would have to be a contender for pop jam of the year, with its brooding haunting main riff, sweet vocal oooh's and boy/girl vocal interplay, a gloomy bit of pop that blossoms into something super melodic, crazy catchy, jangly and crunchy and so great, with some of THEE most perfect vox ever. So now we're convinced that THIS must be THEE jam here, but then "Right Side Of My Brain" starts up, another killer chunk of crunchy jangle, and yet another bit of dark and moody classic style indie pop with yet another killer chorus, and it's right about then that we decide, "fuck it", why bother trying to pick our favorite track, might make more sense to just proclaim this our new favorite pop record and be done with it. And by be done with it, we mean play over and over and over like crazy!!
