Artist: Plot Against Rachel
Album: Self-titled
Label: Abandoned Love Records
Genre: Indie Rock, Rock/Pop
Rating:
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Calling all fans of 90′s emo: rejoice, for Berkeley band Plot Against Rachel has written 21 minutes of sparkling, wistful music that just might cause you to grab your heart and feel nostalgia for things that may or may not have actually happened. The five wonderful songs on the band’s self-titled debut EP, recorded over the course of a year at guitarist Brad McGowan’s studio, are propelled by layered, twinkling, carefully crafted guitar lines. Impassioned male and female vocals come together in soaring harmonies, sounding distant and just out of reach as they express feelings of longing, regret and disappointment.

Simple pleas and promises like “If we could only fix time” and “I’ll get it right this time,” delivered with conviction and urgency, are given extra power by musical arrangements that swell and recede at all the right times. Images of small moments, such as “You left a note on my car that didn’t get you very far,” seem to hold the weight of a lifetime worth of loss and missed chances.

At a time when so many bands choose either to express overblown and ultimately inauthentic emotions or to shun honesty altogether in favor of irony or abstraction, Plot Against Rachel’s wide-eyed yet mature sensitivity is refreshing.

- Review submitted by Kiri Oliver.

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