North of America

While their last effort, This Is Dancefloor Numerology was easily their best to date (that is, until now), those accustomed to the playful, Chapel Hill-style indie rock the band had tackled in their earlier years weren’t ready for the dark and angry math rock workout Numerology provided. "On every record we’ve made, we’ve been pretty conscious of the changes we want to make from the previous one,” says NOA’s Mike Catano, who trades guitar and drum duties with NOA’s other switch-hitter Mark Colavecchia. "A lot of people complained about the last record being so angry so this time we wanted to play songs that could have a little more live energy and could balance more melodic content with the structural intricacy we were going for last time around.” And the results couldn’t be more spot-on. Where Numerology may have made you think, Brothers, Sisters takes those thoughts and wraps them in driving, danceable rhythms and hooky vocal lines. Songs like "Yes to Yes, Curse to Curse” and "Voting No On Warming The Atlantic” are instantly recognisable, and while they maintain some of the time signature trickery and dissonance, the anger is removed for the sake of having a good time. "We had been playing shows when Numerology came out and we weren’t really liking the songs live,” Catano explains further, "I mean, we liked the record but we weren’t having any fun on stage. So we consciously wrote ten songs that would be fun for us as a band. We wanted great shows, you know, a real throw down.”