Hot Water Music

Well it was bound to happen. After five albums and what seems like a billion non-album tracks, this quartet of post-punk loving Floridians has taken what could rightly be described as a radical departure... at least by their standards. Album number six finds the band in a more "serious” songwriting mode. That’s not to say their songs weren’t serious before, but on this record the band has obviously spent a great deal of time refining their musical compositions to the point where the dual gruffness of vocalists Chuck Ragan and Chris Wollard actually sounds polished — some of the credit must also go to producer Brian McTernan who has spent enough time with the band to know what works and what doesn’t. But don’t mistake this polish for selling out. Like everything they’ve ever done, this record oozes integrity and sincerity and that, more than anything, is what powers the disc and everything else the band does. And no amount of musical redirection can take that away.