These are the Honeydogs, one of the Twin Cities' biggest draws since 1995. A monumental work of dark, moody pop, the orchestral layering literally steals tricks from the Beatles songbook and takes lessons from professor Brian Wilson. It's as if the bandmembers finally mastered the syllabus of McCartney, Bowie and Big Star they grew up on, and learned to use those influences to create their own personal thesis. That's all I wanted. I didn't want to be afraid of that.
Luck lies an uneasy frustration.
It manifests itself violently in the snarling guitars and more delicately in the elegiac tone of the strings. Since signing to Mercury and releasing Seen A Ghost in '97, the band's career has been unraveling much like the metamorphical string. Then in August, bassist Trent Norton suffered a near-fatal asthma attack, lapsing into a coma for three days. The chaos, however, forced the band to reinvent itself. By late Septemeber, the album was finished and already gathering a buzz among local musicians and critics who had heard it.