North Atlantic

The North Atlantic have created a distinct and unconventional sound in the seven years since their inception, and Wires in the Walls holds all of the right attributes to attest to that. "Drunk Under Electrics” breaks away from harsh but sparse overtones and into moments of trickling, glittering sounds, as if Jason Hendrix’s guitar has mistaken itself for stars in the night sky. The song seamlessly switches from this soft and subdued headspace back into washy peels of disintegrating noise. "The Man Who Saved Your Ass” at first takes on a vocal styling that covers all-too familiar terrain, but then it heads off into several different directions all at once, and that element of surprise reminds you of what you’re listening to. Wires in the Walls can be unrelenting yet lush, seething and angry and delicate all at the same time. The North Atlantic claim New York post-punk and Chicago noise as influences, yet have created something so separate from anything else out there. No too songs are alike here, as can be attested with the amusing "Scientist Girl” and the stripped down, mordant "Bottom of this Town.” The final track, "The Ministry of Helicopters,” is a fitting conclusion as it reassesses, and reasserts, the North Atlantic’s territory that has been staked out here.