With a wash of cymbals and the melancholic yet hopeful piano of “Walking,” DieAlps! opens their self-titled, self-engineered and recorded EP, the charmingly accented high-toned vocals of Austrian-born guitar-strumming frontwoman Cornelia Calcaterra imploring, “There’s a rock in your shoe, and it’s troublesome, you better hurry ‘cause you’re screwed, knowing you’ll run / when you run, when we run, so many ways to go, so many chances to get lost, but here we are.” [Video after the jump...]
The five-track EP of waltzing baroque-flavored indie pop is packed with sticky refrains, sweetly harmonizing female vocals and unique melodies like those in accordion-laced “Larry Cherrytree,” about the disappointment of a failed relationship, or perhaps one that was never really jump-started, with cooing multi-voice refrains and lines like “And I really, really do like you / but you broke my only heart in two”; there’s even some whistling. The stand-out, however, is very obviously six-plus-minute “Rules of Discipline,” which starts on an odd stilted circus-hued note and eventually reaches a loud crashing peak of guitars only to scale back to quiet and pretty territories as it draws to its conclusion. “All Things Shall Come to an End” brings it all to a dramatic, drawn-out yet sublimely melodic close. (New Granada Records)
Critics' Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars.
DieAlps! drops on Tues., Sept. 23, with a CD release show to occur at New World Brewery on Sat., Sept. 20; Rec Center and Radarmen? join them. More info here.
