Untied States

As Untied States prepare their full-length follow-up to 2006’s impeccable Retail Detail, they’re tiding fans over with the "Bye Bye Bi-Polar” / "These Dead Birds” seven-inch. With a distinctive knack for creating tactile dissonance and layers of dream-laden distortion, Untied States brazenly venture into uncharted territory again and again, and their new seven-inch delivers more of the same catastrophic disharmonies. "Bye Bye Bi-Polar” trickles down in spasming cascades, trickling fiery comets of bruised arrangements through shattered soundscapes. "These Dead Birds” begins like an amalgamation of delicate fits and starts but its sinister undertones gradually give way to a heavy tread that screams and swaggers before collapsing into something that bends and fluctuates into a sweating, caged creature. With Retail Detail, Untied States very much created a world all their own. Now it looks like they’re continuing where they left off, only this time their songs aren’t just staking new turf but are mapping the brave new paths this band are charting.