Get Here & Stay
As easy as it would be to lump 764-HERO in with bands likeBuilt to SpillandModest Mouse, they are actually taking the idiosyncratic "emo" sounds of the Pacific Northwest in a striking direction. Emo veteran John Atkins overturns this new genre's loud-soft schema and weaves a subtler cloth of glittering guitars, wending vocals, and psychedelic interludes. The ballad "Calendar Pages" creates shivering, anesthetic spaces where the silence is as present as the hollow cymbal rolls and dead-of-winter guitars. "Watch the Silverware" is raring to rock the radio with a brilliant off-center guitar riff that encodes the gushing melody directly onto the brain.Get Here and Stayis a quiet surprise--like finding a dollar on the sidewalk.--Lois Maffeo