The Phantom Band
Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 5:01 pmI've been listening to their new album Checkmate Savage for a couple weeks now. I've had the inkling that this is some pretty original shit but didn't want to jump to any conclusions. The album is incredibly varied. To my ears, it's a meld of some Velvet Underground, Wire, and maybe even some Franz Ferdinand. I decided to listen to it again straight through on a flight tonight. It was a trippy and brightly moon-lit night with rippling clouds all around. I think the almost other-worldly setting "flipped" the album for me...I now think it's fucking incredible. There's some great tracks like "The Howling" and "Folksong Oblivion", but they're not even necessarily representative of the whole album - it's a comprehensive piece that benefits when taken as one. Then there's also the nearly 9-minute masterpiece toward the end called "Island". "Island" had me grinning ear-to-ear out the airplane window. I'm hooked. I think this is the early Mercury front-runner.
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