Folk rock with a debt straight back to The Byrds, these guys were fighting uphill with me: I don't really like harmonies, I don't really like the singer-songwriter sound, and I don't have a lot of patience for morose subject matter and tone. And this is mo'-rose. This is some serious depressed shit, just crushed under hopelessness. There are back to back songs that end in suicide. One, and then another! Jesus. As Beavis and Butthead once said about the Everything Hurts video, good news, if you made it through that and didn't kill yourself, I guess you're doing ok.
The only reason works is that the songs really are very beautiful, every note in its right place, floating, cutting, chugging in turn, the vocals flawless, if flirting with too-flawless. The boys pull it off. That the lyrical turns are regularly more interesting than they have to be is a bonus.
The result is influence on countless singer-songwriters and bands alike, with echoes in The Smiths' existential dread, Blur's world-weary narratives, and Stephin Merritt's entire heartbroken menagerie. It's not in my wheelhouse, but for what it is, its pretty darn good 4/5
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