EAGLE BOSTON by EAGLE BOSTON

How would Suzanne Vega sound strangling an elephant? The possibility of such an encounter ever happening overrides the imaginative faculty. So, too, with Eagle Boston and their self-titled debut; one is invited onto a lollypop spaceship ride (albeit a very Teutonic sounding one, and massive as all things Teutonic sound, and as all bands should!); a forest beauty caresses our ears while the basses warble around our feet, organically at first, reminiscent of green, soft moss. It doesn’t turn bad our trip with Eagle, they don’t let us down and the shit’s not laced, we remain soaring after they’ve let us on with the slow to mid-tempo “Paper Trees .” Our ears, however, have to become adjusted to the altitude and you get that funny buffeted feeling that ears tend to get when they are exposed to bouts of cold wind for too long.
It’s frosty up at these heights and the vocals will always remain a little cool and detached but not without intensity, themselves like an eagle’s stare; sounding psychotic yet somehow sweet and natural. Unidentifiable, yet the ear wants to gorge on this newness. Perhaps it’s just something simply gripping going on here and honest that’s all gone so out-of-fashion in the rip-me-up, chew-me-up and spit-me-out post-modern world of music today. Refreshing are only the new combinations or the things that sound so integral that one has to stop and listen. Eagle Boston belongs to the latter group.

There are a lot of references in the sonic world here to 70’s and 80’s things, things that never die and things that don’t necessarily affront the senses directly, one is more … taken. Taken for a ride and the faithful eagle will always glide and guide you although it may not be to everyone’s taste being securely fastened by two claws and forced to take a few, sharp curves in icy winds and at a pace picking up under the bird’s sure wings that is anything but comfortable. They know their way about this new landscape, and we don’t.
Plunging a spiral descent into a maelstrom, the synthesizers crack about us. There is noise, volume, and all the edginess of a rock outfit without a guitar (compliments!). And with two basses and excellent rolls n` beats a lá Can then it’s easy to forget you ever had solid ground under your feet. It’s rhythmic and you are hypnotized all the while swaying away to the Nico-esque voice, or to my ears Suzanne Vega on tranquillizers. I always get the distinct picture of something with an awful lot of power, something in the way of a demon or bastard-cum-god whacking away at something; ugly but with a lot of grace.
Maybe it’s Suzanne thrashing and thwacking her way down to the river through the jungle, or Leonard Cohen’s namesake beating her naughty errant daughter, Yelka. A beauty and a beast, a monster entering heaven, that’s what it is! : Eagle Boston. As all good, nascent things are, there is a certain unspoken destructiveness present. Similar to the effect of the hacking quality of a Rodriguez record, one is left again aching for the sun and that spring may come again.


John Edward Donald


Papertrees Video!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJiXNHkcDD4