Signals Midwest

With Midwest right there in the band name, you get an idea of what you're going to hear on this Cleveland, OH quartet's sophomore album, Latitudes and Longitudes, before it even begins. But for all the minor Small Brown Bike dramatics and Kinsella brothers mathematics, there's rawness in the playing and strength in the writing that defy throwaway comparisons for geography's sake. In fact, the rambunctious, extroverted energy is more reminiscent of NYC favourites Bomb the Music Industry! ("Family Crest") or Latterman ("Construction Paper"), and Signals Midwest return every break and twist in better shape than when they borrowed it. "Memo" opens moody before turning into a downright pretty, sprawling anthem and a similar build occurs in "I Was Lost," which eventually sustains an intensity that's more cathartic than suffocating (bass solo, hello). Its dynamics are powerful and unrelenting, in an exhilarating way; Latitudes and Longitudes is an album that must be taken in all at once, and definitely much more than once.