Eagle*Seagull - Eagle*Seagull

As a college radio DJ, I received Eagle*Seagull’s eponymous debut a couple months ago much to my pleasure—the sticker on the packaging noted that the Nebraska natives espouse a sound akin to that of the beloved Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes, and The Shout Out Louds. To tout a newcomer as such is ballsy, but Eagle*Seagull shrug off the comparisons enough to make this record worthy of familiarization. In the radio booth, it’s difficult (at least for me) to stray from songs that go beyond the 4-minute mark; hour-long shifts tend to force me to play the best brief songs I can find in order to give all the bands worth playing some airtime. Eagle*Seagull flies in the face of brevity (and shits on its car) by injecting their best work into more than one lengthy opus. Musically, Eagle*Seagull migrate all across the board—opener “Lock and Key” is a hushed introduction, making its hub Eli Mardock’s tense keys and guitar until the rest of the band noisily kicks in four minutes later. Its follower, “Photograph,” sounds like an unrelated band—a buoyant melody flittering above piano and unrelenting percussion. If Eagle*Seagull garners a Shout Out Louds comparison, you can bet it’s because of this song. By “Hello, Never,” another unexpected turn is taken, as the band flexes some alt-countryish muscle over an indie-pop veneer. “Your Beauty Is a Knife I Turn On My Throat” is another piano-led bouncer and serves as one of the record’s finer moments. Guitars trade off and intertwine creating a mess of hysteria and splendor as Mardock yowls his anguish, forever on the verge of cracking his voice. Personally, I thought bands like this were only coming from Canada anymore, but Nebraska may prove to be a hotbed outside of the Saddle Creek scene. Put Eagle*Seagull on bills with Wolf Parade, Destroyer, and Arcade Fire, and they’ll automatically win over the approval of hipsters across the nation. For now, they’ll have to settle on their skills alone, and those skills are capable of taking them to many, many high places. [www.papergardenrecords.com]