Simple gyrating guitars with an overblown rhythm section and throaty passionate vocals.

12 MP3 Songs in this album (50:48) !
Related styles: ROCK: Experimental Rock, ROCK: Adult Alternative Pop/Rock

People who are interested in Modest Mouse Kings of Leon TV on the Radio should consider this download.


Details:
Richard Fortin has been tinkering around the edges of the Maine music universe for a few years now, designing Web sites here, promoting bands there, recording digital/techno projects around the corner. Heâs got both a great eye and a great ear, and in Alias Grace heâs helped create a band that is pleasing to both, with an aesthetic that runs through everything they do, slightly off-putting but pretty and grand in their own way.

The debut disc, Bottles and Bones, is the culmination of guitarist/songwriter Fortinâs search for like-minded performers and his success found in Jon Assam, a singer-songwriter who fits with Fortin and generates manic energy with the best of them. Produced and recorded by Noah Cole, Sean Morinâs collaborator on Daro, the album actually shares more sounds with Morinâs full-time gig, Cambiata, than it does with that warm alt-country effort, with touches like tortured talking behind impassioned vocals that just about push you aside with their bulging neck muscles.

The band, rounded out by guitarist Glen Capen, bassist Jason Elvin, and drummer Aaron Lachance, never quite let you get comfortable, with the guitars buzzing around each other and never settling into anything purely rock or pop, and the drums firing out snares and cymbals just when youâre getting settled. I love the muted drums in the right channel of âCo-pilot,â with everything caught up in a bit of a fog, the vocals doubled and buffeted by falsetto backing: âMake pretend/The perfect 10/To all you love letters/Make amends/ With all your friends/ Who love you much better.â

There is passion here, and art, and a mind toward the progressive, though the raw sounds are in many ways the polar opposite of prog-rockâs structured underpinnings. Thereâs a raw nerve present thatâs attractive and a reminder to keep listening for new things and to never be satisfied.