Cymbals Eat Guitars is the most underrated band in America, and I will go door to door if I have to if it means the rest of this country can understand that. Their LP Pretty Years is perhaps the band’s most accessible, all huge guitars and Clarence Clemons saxophone (the N.J. band namechecks Springsteen on the record), but they haven’t lost what made them what they are. On “Fourth of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)”, lead singer Joseph D’Agostino writes the most compelling story told in music this year, about a brush with death that temporarily lifts him out of his depression. “All the adrenaline shocked my nervous system / Swore I’d be present and grateful for every second,” he sings. But then there is the heartbreaking conclusion: “Later the feeling faded / I couldn’t help it.”
“Have A Heart” is a love song that co-opts ’80s jangle and drive to make for one of the lightest, sweetest tracks that Cymbals Eat Guitars have put out to date. “I’m so out of sync, and you’re so out of sync with me,” Joseph D’Agostino sings for the misfit in all of us that just wants to find someone whose flaws are compatible with our own. He’s hung up on his past (“Things we did when we were young and evil”), but feels like he may be able to overcome those flaws with this new relationship: “Empathy never came so naturally ’til I met you.” “Have A Heart”‘s optimism is tempered with a sullen moodiness, sort of like almost taking flight but keeping your toes on the ground, but it still unabashedly entertains the notion that all those crazy romantic stories about love may actually be true: “Can’t believe the shit that we were promised might really exist.”
Cymbals Eat Guitars fourth album, Pretty Years, will be released on September 16th, 2016 on Sinderlyn Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 