Chief - Modern Rituals album flac

In 2008 the members of Chief finished school, left New York City and returned home to the west coast with their suitcases stuffed full of soaring melodies, shimmering guitars, lovelorn lyrics and heart-stopping harmonies. Their debut album, Modern Rituals, is as rich and expansive as it is personal and intricate. This is a record so teeming with joyful desperation that you'll want to hold onto it with all your might.

Modern Rituals, the group's full-length debut, blends NY backbeats and jaded vocals with woolly West Coast harmonies and mellow vibes, and it works in the sense that Chief don't sound explicitly beholden to any single sound or style. But having disparate influences is faint consolation when you're less than the sum of your parts, and Chief fail to be more than an amalgam of other, better bands. At heart, Chief seem more or less like a bunch of hippies. Almost every song on Modern Rituals evokes a band of longhairs, whether it's the close, CSNY harmonies of "The Minute.

The guitars on Modern Rituals are mostly electric, but the sound is slow-rolling and slightly surreal. Chief pile up lush, profoundly stoned harmonies on songs like ‘Night & Day,’ a minor-key lament where Evan Koga tells a lover (or the ghost of one) that ‘I just can’t see your face, every night and da. Modern Rituals is pretty stuff, but tunes like the soft-rock daydream ‘This Land’ float by somewhat shapelessly, and Chief could learn something from fellow California nostalgics Best Coast: Atmosphere is great, but so are sprightliness and hooks. In This Article: Chief.

Rock propositions don't come much more solid and reliable than Chief, least of all on Domino Records, currently home to quirkier offerings from Lightspeed Champion, Animal Collective and Wild Beasts. But this California-bred, New York University-convened four-piece plant a flag in the middle ground for the label, filling their debut with hummable, tastefully produced folk-rock, shot through with confidence without ever chancing unnecessary risks.