Don’t Let This One Get Away
With all the hype around other records due out this week, I’d like to at least call a little attention to an absolute gem of an album I’ve been listening to for the last month, a record that should get official release tomorrow.
The album is called Out Of The Rain, The Thunder, & The Lightning, and it is the 6-years-in the making product of a California-by-way of Boston band called The Faraway Places. To read the band’s own promo materials, they’d have you believe that krautrock pioneers like Can and Neu were a huge influence on their sound. I…guess I hear it. More than that–in fact much more than that, I hear what sounds like a great fat slab of brilliant American rock and roll, a sound that puts me very much in mind of the music that came flowing like a torrent out of the southeastern United States back in the early-to-mid 1980’s. I hear echoes of Pylon and early B-52’s (Chris Colthart and Donna Coppola can’t help but sound a wee bit like the early days of Schneider and Pierson on the bouncy “The Sun Goes West”), traces of Windbreakers and Primitons…and a production sensibility that sounds right out of the good ol’ Drive In Studio.
To be more clear: the guitars on Rain/Thunder/Lightning sound totally fuzzy and totally kick-ass. The hooks on the album go deep and pull you in, even when they’re buried (“F-F-F-F-Fall Down” is the best example; you know that the song title just *has* to be part of a totally kick ass chorus, but they actually ratchet up the tension in the song and make you wait for the coda for the sing-along payoff–but what a payoff it is!)
Maybe the best song on the disc is the incredible and memorable “You Can Cry”. The song is a slow-building stunner that uncorks an awesome George Harrison guitar figure in the chorus, and it just pushes the song into the upper realm of the best songs of the year so far.
The Faraway Places really want you to hear their record for free, so do yourself a favor and head here and give it a bunch of listens:
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Popnarcotic 
Kyle said,
May 21, 2009 at 4:11 am
i can’t stop listening to this album. Faraway Places is one of the best albums I’ve heard this year! thanks for the tip! (as well as all the other albums mentioned recently, spending a lot of money, here… damn.) 🙂