seekonk :: nice wheels

a new day, a new year, some new music. the portland, maine outfit seekonk, whose singer, sarah ramey, i've featured here before, released the pinkwood lp in 2006, a suite of lovely & mostly hushed folk(pop) songs, save one especially tantalizing, swelling track, "take my wife," that served as clear demonstration of what heights the band was capable.

and now, with their newest effort, nice wheels, seekonk has taken a marked step toward sustaining that sharpness over the full course. unfortunately, the album has yet to be released and there is, at current, no plan in place to remedy this. suppose that's where a.g. comes in.

ramey's softly lilting voice disarms you as a listener. it can be hard, at times, to parse the lyrics. her words seem to bob barely distinct along the surface of the instrumentation - an effect that can and often does create something of an emotional disconnect between the delivery and content of the songs (much in the way thom yorke's style affects the perceived meaning of radiohead songs) that, rather than immediately inviting us to make communal whatever pain or melancholia her lyrics might describe, instead allows the emotion to sneak up on us. "i can't remember the last time i had you, but i could lose control," she sings in "breakfast at noon," though she never does quite, and this lends layers of meaning & pathos to the songs, makes for an altogether richer listening experience.

they may not have matched, in any one track on nice wheels, the brilliance of "take my wife" (then again they may have done; it's maybe rather early still to tell), but the album itself is more consistently assertive & confident, the songs sharp, full of sentiment and twang, and it's satisfying, as a fan, to hear the progression in craftsmanship, to witness the step forward.

seekonk - woo hoo
seekonk - hills of pennsylvania
seekonk - breakfast at noon
seekonk - .38 special

if you favor the few songs above, which i hope and believe you will, then also check out the band's myspace, where you can hear another standout n.w. track, "waking," and a few others like it.