12.04.2011

Seventeen Evergreen :: "Angels"


It will be hard to return to that moment in 2005 when Interpol's second LP, Antics, arrived in my mailbox. George Bush was just beginning his second term in office and like the rest of America's college students I was waiting out the cultural malaise by getting lost in a vaguely highfalutin vocabulary and a criminally low self-awareness. Needless to say, I loved it, the record. But as Interpol made themselves irrelevant, the aesthetic they carefully revived went begging in search of a new Dickensian master. Seventeen Evergreen could be exactly this band with lead single, "Angels", a dark post-punky meditation that would remind you of "Public Pervert", only if the torch-like guitars were turned into a broken lighter, flicking sparks over and over into a cupped and covered palm. It rings dark and detached, the kind of thing that wouldn't let you get close enough to make out its figure, let alone see its face. But, the nostalgia is for a band and a moment now gone, and the hopes of a new one, signed to a fantastic label, set to release their second record in the spring. That feeling of drifting, lost in a sea of guitars, hopes for the future set against terrifying geopolitical backdrops isn't new and it isn't supposed to be. You sense Seventeen Evergreen won't care about these comparisons and memories, but you will, a bit at least, before you move on to whatever happens next, sparks in the darkness and five-dollar words in your final research thesis.

Listen :: Seventeen Evergreen - "Angels"

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