A darker, warier Hallelujah the Hills

One of my favorite why-aren't-they-bigger bands has made a new album, and it's considerably less buoyant the celebratory than the others...but still very much worth hearing. Check out my review of Hallelujah the Hills' No One Knows What Happens Next at Blurt today.

I said: No One Knows is more downbeat than previous Hallelujah the Hills outings, warier, more contained and considerably less exuberant. There are still massed horn sections and all-hands, group-shouted choruses, but less of them. There's a lot more smoulder between the explosions. "Get Me in a Room," the album's first single, sounds like Telephono-era Spoon, taut, world-weary, minimalist and the opposite of the giddy, literate excesses you expect from Hallelujah the Hills. "Nightingale Lightning" is more true to form, bulging with trumpet solos and weird string-and-opera-singer-samples and unstoppable in its upslanting chorus. Yet there's no mistaking the disgruntled, discouraged tone of an album that includes songs titled "Care to Collapse," "Dead People's Music" and "Hello, My Destroyer."

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While you're over at Blurt, why not read Ron Hart's piece on Flying Nun at 30.