Tenement Halls...

Some asides:

1) I heard The Silver Jews' Tanglewood Numbers yesterday. Wow. I'll leave it at that. Serious candidate for record of the year. It easily stands with the best stuff i've heard so far. Berman has taken it to another level. The sound is loose and fast with Berman's usual lyrical acumen anchoring everything just so. There's a lovely duet with his wife that just blew me away. You must get this upon its release. Must. What I heard had ten songs, I imagine final sequencing might be longer.

2) My daugher's two favorite albums are now The Decemberist's Castaways And Cutouts and Rhett Miller's The Intigator. She's six. I don't know what that means, except that perhaps there is a pop gene.

Now on to Tenement Halls. The band has risen from the ashes of the once great and criminally overlooked Rock*A*Teens. The common ground with both bands is singer songwriter Chris Lopez. Lopez is one of those rare souls who can pen a pop tune that transcends the limits of what can be done in 3 or 4 minutes. His voice is ragged and always seems on the edge of falling apart. It's frayed but composed. Lyrically Lopez haunts the melancholy halls of heartbreak and ragged living, but disquises the worst of it with catchy guitar pop melodies and up temp timing that recall early REM, the Kinks and Elvis Costello. The record, Knitting Needles and Bicycle Bells, is released Aug. 23.

from Knitting Needles And Bicycle Bells:

Now She Knows

Up & Over The Turnstiles