Whiskers

You know that band back home that broke up because they all left for different schools? Well that's no longer an excuse. This post could easily become a preachy post about the wonderful communicative powers of the internet, so I'll get to the music part.

The Whiskers are a band from Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts. And before you make the assumption, they didn't all meet in Brooklyn and start playing there. They formed on a message board ( the only Frog Eyes message board to be exact). All their ideas and music was exchanged via internet.

Their second release, The Distorted Historian, came out earlier this week. While it might seem that a band formed on a fan forum for another band might come too close to sounding like a tribute band, this isn't the case. While I can hear some Mercer in there, I still think it could be impossible for someone to come off as rabid as Mercer in song*. Instead, I find that it is hard to pinpoint all the places the band has drawn from.Sure, I could point out that there's plenty of places where the vocal style reminds me much of Krug, or that "Traitor Hater" reminds me a good bit of Yorke, but I just did. Even in these places, the full picture is nothing like the compared artists. There's simply too much going on, blended in careful proportions to point and say what it sounds like. In other words, it sounds like The Whiskers, not something else.

I mentioned it on the message boards, but there aren't a lot of albums that I listen to all the way through. I'm a track skipper. Yet The Whiskers have put out an album that I've been listening to all the way through. You can buy it or download it for free here. Also should check out their music videos on youtube.

The Whiskers - Autopia
The Whiskers - Ziggurats




*I mean this in the best way possible. Seriously, I find myself at a lack of words when it comes to describing that guy.