Chapel Hill indie folkie poppy long term go your own speed rock band Kingsbury Manx's last album 2009's Ascenseur Ouvert was a flat out masterpiece which because it is on the low key side has withstood time with its tune in place and its pastoral elegance improved.
Three years later, after a year of gestation alone, here comes album # 6, Bronze Age, and it is poppier and even more tuneful than AO, though a little to soon to assess if it has the staying power. These are intricate pop song portraitures which work whether you're paying attention or leaving em in the background. The beats are slitheir on tracks like "Soley Bavaria" which even includes a keyboards solo, and on the Billboard 200 hit of your daydreams "Glass Eye" -a song with so many delicate musical touches, a synth side effect here, a harmony there, you don't know what part to concentrate on first.
Vocalist Bill Taylor is a quiet singer and you have to strain to catch his somewhat less than obsequious sentiments of love but they have a clever cutting edge at odds with the sound. It is like being attacked by an angel. This is the method of attack of Kingsbury Manx, they are a tactile pop band, it is all feel and intuition, they are in an eternal now which still seems old fashioned (hence the title). There is a timelessness to these songs and the strength you get from playing with songs and not playing songs: it seems like a deep well of sound.
I wonder how much environment affects the band? Chapel Hill is a little big college town, it seems like as much a town on the cusp of adulthood as the band seems like adults on the cusp of an endless childhood: it seems to drift like a Summer afternoon. And Kingsbury Manx's trick is to make the work of playing seem like an effortless dream world.
And the entire effect remains lovely, it is mellow without being weak and on the album closer "Ashes To Ashes (Tailspins)", another depressing song, it builds to a powerful coda that makes you wonder what they are like live -the release you don't find in the words are in the music. It isn't the "smoke and mirrors" of love, it is the "I guess this Bronze age dies alone on the telephone". It is a deep discomfort that lulls you and wakes you.
Grade: A-