Jared Grabb & Wesley Wolfe

Jared Grabb & Wesley Wolfe Split 7"/digital

Chicago's Jared Grabb and Carrboro, North Carolina's Wesley Wolfe will release this split 7-incher September 7th, 2010 on clear vinyl and digital download from Thinker Thought Records. Both songs, "La Salle" by Grabb and "Climb Up" by Wolfe are captivating in their own right, but act as yin and yang when played back to back. On their own both would be strong singles, but their volume is equal even as they are different in terms of delivery.

Paired together they elicit a shorthand of storytelling in the listener's mind. Musically, they play aesthetically as a fictional past and present, "La Salle" as an energetic and vibrant moment in time and "Climb Up" many years later as reflection and illumination. "La Salle" is an upbeat number, built around acoustic guitar playing that ascends and descends with a subtle Latin feel. Grabb sings with twisting vocals, "We're young and poor and different," a lyric that sticks around even as the song ends. His singing is warm and inviting, layered with a crooner's sensibility.

"Climb Up" is, to a degree, dreamlike, due to smooth and crystallized vocals matched with the song's strolling nature. The song's initial gentle acoustic picking is met with heavy-handed electric guitar strikes that are fuzzed and reverberating. The effect is powerful, echoing in the background like emotional alarm. Its plodding tempo works like a trance - lulling and hypnotic, delivering comfort more than as an effort to dislodge. Its a complex song, but comes off as quite simplistic - a handful of musical ideas placed together with elegant effect.

While Grabb's song is memorable for its catchiness and hook, Wolfe's is for emotional resonance. The split single from these singer-songwriters should serve as an invitation to dig deeper into their respective catalogs.

-Brian Tucker

www.thinkerthought.com

SECRET COLOURS

SECRET COLOURS

While Secret Colours may be carving out their own space in the Chicago music scene they have a solid asset in their superb self-titled debut album, a polite mix of psychedelic, fuzzed out guitar accompanied by a whispered vocalist, Tommy Evans. For all their confessions of fondness for The Black Angels they do well in holding back, by not being coarse and bombastic. Secret Colours finds gold in playing it restrained for the most part. The music here is mostly laid back way, think T.Rex crossed with certain aspects of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's gentler material, namely from Howl. Secret Colours as an album maintains a spacey quality, at times bridging blistering guitar licks with cooing vocals and subtle acoustic guitar. Unabashedly, it plays like really good make out music from a lost decade, rich with an older music texture and it could be mistaken for being recorded across the pond. It could also be misread as a copy of a copy of a copy. That may be true, but in this case it matters little, as Secret Colours, make affectionate and fine rock music. Secret Colours may be a by-product of times gone by and bands alike (Oasis, Brian Jonestown Massacre) but bless 'em for doing so. They've recorded a solid of album songs that burns at a slow pace and curls up alongside like a promising date.

-Brian Tucker

www.secretcolours.com