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Clock Hands Strangle
Distaccati
Chocolate Lab
"Distaccati"—Italian for detached. Perhaps detachment is what Clock Hands Strangle singer/songwriter Todd Portnowitz was writing about in the band's follow up to 2007's debut Redshift/Blueshift. However, when you put Portnowitz's lyrics together with Brian Bo's bass, Adam Burguet's drums, Christian Duran's trombone, organ and piano and Nick Hill's guitar, you come up with Distaccati, a wonderfully engaging sleeper of an album.
Mixed by producer Geza X (Germs, Dead Kennedys), the music serves as a counterpoint to both the poetry of the lyrics and the vocal delivery. The music to the opener Distaccati might make you feel like the top is down as you drive through kudzu-lined roads somewhere in Georgia. The lyrics, on the other hand, tell us that, "Walt Whitman laid his blanket next to me and said, 'The more you know the smaller you grow.'" Without pause, the tempo swings for a moment into a cacophony of a trombone and snare-driven rhythm as a break before the poetry and music that is the song "Desert Music." Shortly thereafter we're taken to the rocking alt-country hoedown "As Is."
Throughout Clock Hands Strangle's second offering, the tempos change and the music sometimes sounds purposefully blended into a dirgey, low and stripped down line of attack. Then, in the absence of a neck brace, your head is jerked around with songs like "To A Meteorite In A Museum." On this track, a harmonica accompanies a lovely acoustic riff and it will remind you of Bob Dylan, especially when Mr. Portnowitz sings, "You left me like a footprint in the moon..."
Go ahead, become engaged to Distaccati.
3.5/5 OI's
OI, OI, OI, O
—Peter Hamm
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