'Everything's ringing. I'm on the chime of a bell...'
When I had just turned twenty I had some kind of daydream about being singer in a guitar based Rock and Roll band. It was never likely to be realised but I did have a few half baked lyrics and ideas of melodies and an idea of who was going to be my accomplice on guitar, the Buck to my Stipe, Marr to my Morrissey. Most of the lyrics I came up with which I can still remember make me cringe now with their gaucheness but I liked and still liked the line above. It seemed to encapsulate a kind of youthful intensity, the idea of being lost in sound.
Brooklyn's The New Lines sound as if they're lost in sound or even on the chime of a bell on their most recent album Love & Cannibalism. The Byrds ringing guitar signatures are the clear and obvious reference point but it's an updated Byrds, filtered through fifty years of collective experience, Stereolab, Elephant 6, Clientele, Crystal Stilts, soundtracks, books and dream to the point where it sounds authentically and distinctly 2016. The record has some of the best titles going this year; In Which a Child Consults the Occult to Revive his Dead Cat; Weatherman's Apology; Mass Observation; Ventriloquism. That's just the first four tracks. The music more than matches up. Hipsters clearly. But inspired hipsters. Another album for that list I completed yesterday.
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