Californian collective's third album. Definitely something nasty in the woodshed.
After 1999's The Singing Hatchet album, Radar Brothers' Jim Putnam rebuilt his studio, renamed Phase III and produced another set of songs packed with gentle Neil Young-isms and big, widescreen productions. With a sound like the sun coming up over the prairie, Putnam's sad-eyed take on alt-country is comfortable enough at first glance, but there is a dark undertow to these vignettes. "Too bad the sisters couldn't stay," he muses cryptically on Sisters. "They're missing for a week...from here the weapon looks clean." The sky gets cloudier on the dramatic Mountains, until Morning Song closes the record on a slightly more settled note. Delicately twisted, but a record of considerable beauty. [4/5]
MARTIN O'GORMAN
The Daily Telegraph
Wistful, poignant, plaintive, plangent: welcome to the realm of the Radar Brothers, the Californian-based trio whose album is a masterclass in the art of happy-sad music-making. As with their previous releases, the fabric of their sonic universe is a delicately structured thing: acoustic and electric guitars, piano, bass and drums set the scene with their gentle strummings and ticklings, while male voices forced into the next octave (in the manner of Mercury Rev or Grandaddy) describe bitter sweet melodies.
With its slow tempi (often in waltz time) and dreamy lyrics ("Sleep remains your friend for ever more"), this is not exactly music to set the world alight. But in the right place at the right time (at home, candles lit, bottle open), it's the very thing. Melancholia never sounded so appealing.
DAVID CHEAL