Ones To Watch:Cymbals Eat Guitars

Blogosphere adoration alert! Serious indie credentials warning! Sit up and take note, Clash kids - Cymbals Eat Guitars are the next US indie band to launch a winsome assault on both sides of the Atlantic, attempting to cross over from Internet-streamed entities into flesh-and-blood rockers.

Having only been in existence since spring 2008, the stars have aligned very quickly for this quartet from Staten Island, New York. After recording their self-funded debut album ‘Why There Are Mountains’ with Kyle “Slick” Johnson of Modest Mouse engineering credentials, the manager-less troop agreed to make a torrent of the LP on their friend’s blog at the beginning of this year, which saw over three thousand downloads by the end of the first week.

From here the pace picked up when Pitchfork wrote a glowing review of the ilk most new bands would give their Marshall Amps for. “The main catalyst that we received was definitely the review on Pitchfork, along with some support we’d received from a couple of radio stations here in America,” explains band lynchpin and visionary Joe D’Agostino. “And the blogosphere has been so supportive, it’s really taken off since January when we had our master copy of the album and we didn’t know what the fuck to do with it.”

For those who like their music fiercely independent, densely layered and complex, look no further than here.

‘Why There Are Mountains’ is a record that keeps on giving with every listen. So generous are CEG in their aural offerings, it feels nigh on impossible for the listener to be able to identify every little nuance recorded, even if you were to listen to the album non-stop for a month.

However, that’s not to say that it’s a polished effort with every ounce of soul eked out. On the contrary, extremes in dynamics, tempo changes, layered guitars that swing between being scratchy and jaunty, overloaded with feedback and wah wah, splashes of strings and brass and an often-screaming and less than perfect vocalist have combined with alchemic yet deliberately imperfect precision.

It is as if Pavement had never split up, but rather joined Modest Mouse for a big, drunken, stoned collaboration of epic proportions.

The Pitchfork review led to other avenues of opportunity, with bassist Neil Berenholz calling the best record shops in America to sell the LP in the absence of a distribution company, while a week of furious performances in the UK led to a deal being signed with Memphis Industries. Second single ‘Indiana’ is out this month, preceding the release of ‘Why There Are Mountains’ by a week. And for those who can’t wait for them to return to the UK stage, two support slots with The Flaming Lips by personal request of Wayne Coyne and co. are slated for next month. There’s no doubt about it - the coming months are going to prove that CEG are very real indeed.

Words by Laura Foster