Merge Records
2005
Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells
About This Album
Rock*A*Teens frontman Chris Lopez returns with Tenement Halls, and their first album is both a departure from and a continuation of the earlier group's sound. The Rock*A*Teens were distinguished by the almost impossible amount of reverb they drenched their songs with, the gripping quality of Lopez's songs, and his keening wail of a vocal. On Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells, Lopez (who plays all the instruments except for drums on a couple of songs and produced as well) peels back the reverb to human levels and adds lots of organ and piano, percussion, and acoustic guitar to brighten the room and add texture. That's not to say he has forsaken reverb; there is still more than enough here to fulfill anyone's minimum reverb requirements. Lopez also lightens things by toning down his vocals somewhat -- by howling less and using dynamics more he makes the songs easier to swallow the first time around. But that's not to say he remotely sounds under control most of the time; he still careens and swoops through the songs like Barry Sanders running through a secondary. As for the songs, they are perhaps his strongest batch to date. They revolve around the usual Southern gothic themes of mental instability, loneliness, desolation, and infidelity, yet are almost all delivered with a disarming brightness and cheer that keep the gloom from settling in.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,5 and 9)

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