New Wax


With 2009's New Denver, Brooklyn's Motel Motel married raucous indie-rock with Americana-hued soundscapes. With jangle to spare, it was an album just as fit for the plains of the Midwest as it was for busy New York city streets. With their new album The Big Island, the band boldly veers away from the outright country twang of New Denver and opts for guitar work more reminiscent of early-90's indie-rock. On The Big Island, lead singer Eric Engel's voice still reaches blissfully unhinged territory, but songs like "Wolf Road" and the string-laden "Helena, MT" explore more subdued territory than anything on the ramshackle New Denver. Elsewhere, the angular guitars on "Damietta" find the band exploring their inner math-rock band while the 7-minute long "Cowboy" is an all-out jam complete with instrumental breakdowns and tempo shifts. With The Big Island, Motel Motel leans moreso towards their avant-garde tendencies yet they do so without sacrificing the infectious energy of the more Americana-tinged New Denver. They veer outside the boundaries of folk-rock and do so successfully. -- Capt. Obvious