Album: Denison Marrs
Artist: Denison Marrs
Label: Floodgate/Word
Sounds like: Queens of the Stone Age, Further Seems Forever

While there are still hints of The Cure and Jimmy Eat World, this album is an altogether more fearsome beast than the last. The sharpened riffs are more like the neo-New Wave of The Strokes or Franz Ferdinand, but unlike their art-directed slickness, this has a grubbier and more gothic undercurrent like Queens of the Stone Age (they also have that dexterous snappiness). Songs like “You are everything” grind and bellow, while “Secret sinners” has both a two-note riff and heavy monochromatic feel like Starflyer 59, unsurprisingly as Jason Martin sings on it. The album’s not exactly as fun as “Then is the new now”—there’s nothing as buoyant as “This must be love.” Rather, it’s more furrowed brows and intense, complicated music.

Four out of Five