SILENT ALLIANCE

A - Side- Cities on Fire: I'm really not just saying this....I woke up a couple days in a row humming this...in weird moments, waiting for trains, making coffee.

This could immediately be completely at home in a John Hughes movie. The opening sequence, school is starting... it's September, the characters are introduced. A camera fast pans across mostly weirdos, skating, lighting cigarettes, sunglasses. Since they have to be here they might as well look cool. A huge chorus of keyboards, the airy doubled up guitar sound. So chipper and cheerful it's impossible.... they get overwhelmed by the chorus synth line.

Phillip's vocals can't help but bring to mind Andy McCluskey from OMD, their Sugar Tax era. Pure indie guitar dance energy, and dripping with sincerity. It's like they believe in the happy ending to that movie...something is going to work out. We'll find a way to stop that corporate radio station from taking over.

Silent Alliance is working from that earnest pop cannon of the late 80's, early 90's. A simply complex crafty pop song. Bursting with sugar ...topped off by the 'Come on let's go!' yelled in between verses. Count it off and lay into the chorus again.

The astonishing thing is in trying to pick apart the melodys all supporting each other, the layers and layers of guitar lines, it's so dense this orchestral ensemble just can't go together. The kind of song that would be on in your car late at night after finally talking to that girl you've been avoiding all year. Anything could happen. You don't feel like such a jerk anymore.

The B side 'The Edge of Town' is a little more somber sounding at first, a bell sounding synth line and heavy chorus guitar slowly strummed but it doesn't last long until . They are filling every empty moment, packing it with total sing-a-long material. They take apart each chorus, change the breakdown. Take me to the edge of the town ...uh oh. Like the Psychedelic Furs left of center, it's that surface teen angst. You can't be that angry, that isolated anymore.

Finding out it's made by great people is just the icing on the cake. It's inspiring to see the format supporting artists like this a real story of friends putting sheer joy out there into the world by way of Fastcut. Get the single from Fastcut records, probably an import wherever you are reading this.

The podcast (Episode 38, 33:51, 31.7mb) attempts to break the Silent Alliance sound into it's pieces and put it back together again.

by Jason, taken from 7inches.blogspot.com