Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien (2011)

Tracklist

01. Rifle Eyesight
02. Shore Points
03. Keep Me Waiting
04. Plainclothes
05. Definite Darkness
06. Another Tunguska
07. The Current
08. Wavelengths
09. Secret Family
10. Gary Condit


Rather than playing it safe and simply re-creating their 2009 debut, Cymbals Eat Guitars decided to tweak their sound in a moodier direction on their sophomore album, Lenses Alien. Focusing on mining melody from discord, the band’s follow-up combines the jangly harmony of Archers of Loaf with the slick precision of the Dismemberment Plan, pinning listeners under a Wall of Sound in songs like “Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name)” before letting them explore the wide-open spaces of “The Current.” Despite only taking a couple of years to put out a second album, Lenses Alien also feels like an altogether more grown-up record. A lot of the sparkling ebullience that permeated Why There Are Mountains seems to have given way to a darker tone that gives the band a more weathered sound without making them seem jaded or weary. This kind of shift marks Cymbals Eat Guitars as a band that is willing to grow their sound rather than just be content to release the same album again and again, making Lenses Alien an album that’s not only a great follow-up to their first album, but a promise of good things yet to come.

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