Artist: Morning Spy
Album: The Silver Age
Label: KEEP Recordings
Genre: Indie Rock, Rock/Pop
Rating:
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At some point in a young, self-pitying person’s life, they must turn off the “Amelie” soundtrack and pop in an album like Morning Spy’s The Silver Age, which sports smashingly written tracks and DAMN fine lyrics. In fact, the lyrics are so good; I painstakingly copied them off of the CD jacket, where they were emblazoned proudly (and rightly so) in blurry Courier type.

“Princess Vancouver” is my favorite track, and invokes every last one of the flattering expletives in my vocabulary. Musically, it is near perfect, but the lyrics for “In the Silver Age” really blow my mind, like that hot, aloof boy from your AP Lit class who was way too cool for the likes of the student body and opted to spend his lunch break in the restroom, incessantly scribbling away in his journal…But I digress- that boy grew up, and now he pens lines like “It was hard, you were spent; you couldn’t make rent, your twenties were filled with orphaned events” (In the Silver Age)

Morning Spy’s sound is the latest, best, and probably last wildly popular gasp of Modest Mouse inspired music you’ll hear for awhile, liberally peppered with Lou Reed inflections. When Allison Guffman chimes in on pop tracks like “Overnite,” it’s like Rainer Maria come back to life. Morning Spy’s been playing shows with locally celebrated folk rock heroes like Vervein and Kelley Stoltz, a sound indicator that the musicological powers-that-be are taking notice, as should you.

- Review submitted by Naomi Raddatz.

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