" ... a poppy hybrid of Lifter Puller and American Music Club."
-City Pages

12 MP3 Songs
POP: with Live-band Production, ROCK: Emo



Details:
"The first song on the latest Love-cars offering [THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME WHAT I ALREADY KNOW] is 'Let's Start a Band,' a snapshot of a soul at a crossroads between boredom and brashness that spirals off to the self-evident conclusion, 'So let's start a band/Wrap souls around our friends/Things that make us laugh/Do our best to make things happen.' That wizened voice belongs to James Diers, a wordsmith and obvious sound addict who has never sounded so vulnerable, confused or wide-eyed as he does on these 12 tracks. Built on a bed of acoustic and electric guitars and orchestral, operatic, sonic youth arrangements, THANK YOU is a puzzle of syllables and sounds that more often than not pushes past its own tendencies toward irony into self-awareness. ... 'You & the Sound' is a lovely rumination on life and times, 'My Shoestring' is a complicated love song with darkness in its heart, and 'Friends' is a trippy reminder to seize the night. Best of all is 'How Old Are You Now?' which finds Diers at his most concise and which could stand as any generation's anti-anthem."
(St. Paul Pioneer Press)

" ... a poppy hybrid of Lifter Puller and American Music Club. ...[THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME WHAT I ALREADY KNOW]'s somnambulant soliloquies could verge on gibberish were they not delivered with Diers's earnest vocals. The breathy conviction Diers musters for lines such as 'Homecoming kings with scrap-metal wings' and Freudian references like 'ego-plated pistol' adds to their potency."
(City Pages)


"When Love-cars frontman James Diers asks, 'What's spilling out over me' during one of the many noisy climaxes on his band's riveting third CD [THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME WHAT I ALREADY KNOW], it's clear that his mess is coming from within. Diers and his band of less-than-merry gentlemen -- including Happy Apple's Dave King on drums -- apparently scoured every miserable relationship and unhappy story they could think of to make up this roller-coaster ride of an album, co-produced by 12Rods' Ev. ... [T]hese guys convincingly build up Sunny Day Real Estate-like climaxes made of guitar walls and lyrical pitfalls in 'You & the Sound' and 'How Old Are You Now?' There's a lot more sophistication than that soft-to-hard roar, though. 'Licorice' and 'My Shoestring' are lighter pop gems ... while the brilliant 'Let's Start a Band' and untitled second track recall the sweeping soundscapes of the Flaming Lips or the Doves."
(Minneapolis Star Tribune)

"Finding a suitable place in the world: a thankless task for the dreamer. Luckily, abstract ideas can solidify in art with more grace than reality. And if one can only follow the cautious lead of Love-cars' James Diers, somewhere amidst gravity-defying melodies and grounded, contemplative lyricism (which still manages to walk on air), the wanderer can settle. [THANK YOU FOR TELLING ME WHAT I ALREADY KNOW] just might place them toe to intrepid toe with the icy and unrelenting present tense. Diers' own sonic zeitgeist encompasses not only an adolescent yearning for validation, as in the anthemic 'Let's Start a Band,' and the young upstart's declaration 'The Food Chain,' but also rationalizes mature relationships. His swelling vocals are earnest, choosing several refrains that ring like mantras for the underdog. ... The culminating 'Glad I Bumped into You in a Dream' finds fodder, 'listening to Dark Side of the Moon, while making love in a gorilla suit.' If Diers' black and blue-eyed soul doesn't sound your alarm, the grinding start/stop guitars, avant drum-major licks and samples will hold you, if only momentarily. Like a good dream."
(Minnesota Daily)