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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Eisley
Room Noises
(Reprise Records)
By Ashleigh Powell
Everybody around here with even a remote interest in popular music knows about Eisley: five-member band from Tyler, made up of four young siblings (three sisters and a brother) and a young family friend; used to be called Moss Eisley, after a particular Star Wars solar system; opened for The Polyphonic Spree at South by Southwest; toured with Coldplay; signed to a major major label. Well, now that they’ve been on the verge of greatness, it’s time for them to deliver — and they do, with Room Noises, their full-length debut, on Warner Bros.
More information: Situated somewhere between “femo” (female-emo) and latter-day Beatles-ish grandeur, Room Noises requires proactive listening, just to really be able to appreciate the myriad beautiful subtleties — lyrics like “with your telescope eyes, metal teeth / I can’t be seen with you, you see,” the angelic voices of co-lead singers Sherri and Stacy Dupree, solemnly lovely piano intros like those on “Memories” and “Brightly Wound,” the rhythm section’s uniformly inventive work, and the whole R.E.M.-fronted-by-Juliana-Hatfield-ish vibe. This isn’t music built for big radio. This is music for the new era, in which supremely talented bands, such as Death Cab For Cutie and Guided By Voices, can build long-lasting careers not on commercial radio and MTV videos but on college radio and touring. If big radio comes a-knockin’, great. But these bands aren’t banking on it — to their credit.
Eisley has progressed impressively since their arrival on the scene a few years ago, when the band appeared to be hampered by a compulsion to vocally melodicize every other minute. The only problem with Room Noises (and this is a minor quibble) is that some songs are so cluttered with instruments and assorted walls of sound that some of the potentially strong elements get lost in the wash. Again, small bones to make about an album that is full of anything but “noise.”
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