Reviews

Somewhere between Coldplay, Fugazi, and Hopesfall’s more atmospheric moments there exists a breach in the negative zone known as Celebrity.  This Nashville foursome writes leisurely twinkling indie rock that is both competent and engaging.  They end up creating more of a mood than a sound, especially with their album art and the accompanying DVD (which features four videos). That mood is the exhausted, dreamy feeling of erupting sleep: when the nocturnal visions first wrap their tendrils around your mandibles.  It is a comforting feeling; slightly surreal and incrementally disquieting, but wholly inviting and familiar.
 
The acoustic opener Blood Sugar is sort of a false start, promising a hopefulness which never materializes.  Motion Pictures About Love offers a true introduction to the bands morbid side right off the bat with the opening lines, “Broken vessels, shattered teeth.”  The fourth track They Notice expands on the dreary danceyness of it all with a very Cure-esque rhythm, but it is really the next song, Nothing Left For You, in which Celebrity shows what it can do.
 
Nothing Left For You throws out hooks in so many different forms: lyrics, rhythms, sounds, the overall vibe: that it’s impossible to tell what exactly makes it such a great song.  The line “I’ll take the garbage out/ Make love and flush it down” is so intimate and is the product of such soul bearing that you feel like a suburban voyeur hiding behind bushes and peering through windows.
 
Mining For Twilight could be Tim Kasher fronting the Cure, or it could be what it is: a great album by an embarrassingly honest Tennessee indie band with a terrible name. Celebrity?  Like Paris Hilton?  Gross.  It is the perfect soundtrack for reading a Vertigo comic or reading some stark modern fiction.  An outstanding record to listen to alone, so get a couple copies for your friends to take home.  Meet up later, over coffee, and discuss your favorite part.  This is homework, people. Get to it!