The Kingdom Flying Club
Non-Fiction/Sumatra Fox
Emergency Umbrella
Take a gander at the cross-references for this album – many culled from the band’s press release – and then ask yourself if you really want to hear another band that sounds anything like these much derived-from rock icons. If you do, these two releases, which run the gamut of jaunty piano-drivers, pulled-taffy riffs and forlorn ballads, should appease you. If you’re looking for something a little brighter than a decade’s dull haze from the mid-‘90s indie explosion, you might want to pass. I’m somewhere in the middle. There’s enough familiar sounding stomping ground covered here to make me a little nostalgic for when Stephen Malkmus and Rivers Cuomo had talent; but with few exceptions (“Artists Are Boring” from Non-Fiction being one), I’d rather plumb those old, consisteantly great discs than these spotty entries.
Emergency Umbrella: http://www.emergencyumbrella.com
