Guitars, Drums, Tones, and Saxophones

Bishop Allen - Grrr...

New York-by-way-of-Boston indie-popsters Bishop Allen have returned, with their follow-up to 2007’s The Broken String. This is the band’s first album of all-new material since their 2003 debut, Charm School, as The Broken String was largely re-recorded versions of songs from their year-long EP project.

The first thing a listener will notice is that, overall, this album is lighter and sunnier than The Broken String. While the previous album had a number of songs that painted dark, ominous imagery (perhaps most notable, “Flight 180″), the mood here is much less oppressive. The band has said that this album is something of a return to their Charm School days, though I see it as more of a logical progression from The Broken String. The willingness to experiment with instrumentation found on that album is still there and going strong.

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Bishop Allen - The Broken String

I’m coming back after an extended absence with this, an album you likely have heard about, from a delightful Brooklyn-based (formerly Boston-based, let the record show) quartet/quintet. (?) Nowadays, I guess the band’s gotten a lot of exposure, first through the indie flicks by director/writer/actor Andrew Bujalski (band head-honchos Justin Rice and Christian Rudder’s former roommate), and in the movie Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

I would like to take this moment to establish my cred, and mention that when I first got into this band, I had to mailorder their CD from the guys, as no one was stocking Charm School, their self-produced and self-released debut album. Then, of course, amid issues working on their follow-up to that album (the aborted Clementine), they began “The EP Project,” in which they recorded an EP a month for each month in 2006.

If you followed the songs on those EPs (and you should have, particularly the August EP, which features a show they played at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge, MA) then the songs on this record will feel familiar to you. Primarily this is because 9 of the album’s 12 songs come from those EPs, re-recorded here.

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