Eagle Scout

Somewhere in the musical crossroads of Seattle's indie melancholy and the Midwest's math rock/post-punk hotbed lays the sound of Greenville, IL's Eagle Scout. Armed with an angsty, young restlessness and a whack of choppy, minor key dissonance, Eagle Scout's first full-length wears producer Matt Goldman's (Underoath, Copeland) sheen remarkably well. Instead of turning them into radio victims, the production serves as a platform to showcase the intricate, sliding finger picked passages of "I Am Your Ghost" and the so-smooth time signature change-ups in "Our Body Is Walls." At times, the performances are at odds; vocalist/bassist Brandon Hunter can slip from a throaty leader into hushed, trembling isolation, and the music can do the same, but rarely do they coincide. The contrast is flattering and like any truly compatible pairing feels as intuitive as it does complementary. New Hands closes with "Our Body Is Walls," again a natural juxtaposition, sounding like At the Drive-In decided to cover Hot Rod Circuit. It's one of the strongest songs here and like all good album closers, feels almost like a cliff-hanger, indicating change and more good to come.