Staten Island indie rock quartet Cymbals Eat Guitars is a music critic's dream come true; not only defying labels like genre but so ruggedly individual in their overall approach that you'd have a tough time thinking of bands to compare them to. The band's debut album Why There Are Mountains is a hodgepodge of sounds and musical ideas achieved at a positively epic level. Six minute lead track "And the Hazy Sea" is an exercise in organized chaos beginning with a loud dizzying cluster of sounds before erupting into anthemic punky shout vocals. The track shifts dynamics to an almost startlingly unexpected degree connected by the vocals and a listless drifting feeling remiscient of being adrift at sea. The album's lead track brings you more places aurally than most artists do in the span of a whole record.
"Some Trees (Merritt Moon)" follows in a similar manner to the first track but in a much more controlled and less grandiose manner. "Indiana" and "Cold Spring" continue the album, stripping away some but not all of the fuzziness and intensity and adding extra instruments like strings to the core guitars, drums, and keyboard. "Share" sees the return of all the fuzziness in its full glory accompanying floating melancholic vocals and horns. Seven minutes long, the song slowly unfolds for the duration before reaching a groovy pop rocky climax.
"Wind Phoenix" sees the return of the horn section and serves as the album's most widely accessible and poppy track but that in no way takes away from the song's legitimacy or its role in the album's sojourn through wilds of nature and emotion.
Album-ender "Like Blood Does" grounds everything you just heard by starting anew, stripping down to the bare essentials of guitar and vocals, slowly building on the remains eventually incorporating every instrument and gaining more and more momentum until a wall of sound restarts all of the energy and the track drifts out.
Cymbals Eat Guitars may be their name but no one instrument outshines the other, instead working together to create a captivating unifed work of art that just might make this album and Cymbals Eat Guitars your new and most-listened-to favorites.
Give the album a listen and begin what sure to be a lengthy love affair here:
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