Album Reviews

Welcome to the land of Russian Circles where the drums lay down the laws, thumping bass lines enact them and scorching guitars make sure no one even thinks of breaking them in the first place.

They already blew me away with last year’s “Station” and they simply repeat that barely one year later with “Geneva”. While it seems to be something of an unwritten rule in the post-rock scene to have songs that are drawn out to the point of inifinity, these guys come in and get the job done without outstaying their welcome. While they are still loud enough to cause avalanches when played in the mountains, it seems these Chicago natives finally understood the value of words such as ‘calm’ and ‘mellow”. It makes “Geneva” their most accomplished album to date and while they were already experts at playing with dynamics, they’ve become even better at it this time around.

With more bands like this, post-rock might even have a shot at becoming an interesting genre again!