 The Better Letters is a fitting name for a band that considers each note, each phrase, and each chorus as carefully as its five members. The perfect antidote to the run-on sentence, the band's short, sweet, never self-indulgent reinvention of jittery, late 70’s punk will make you want to get up and dance. On the Brooklyn, five-piece's first 7-inch (4:3 Records), songwriter/guitarist/vocalist, Joe Palumbo's nervous, wailing vocals (reminiscent of David Byrne or Mark Mothersbaugh) ground angular guitars, traveling bass lines, and organ-like synth sounds. While The Better Letters most immediately evoke bands like Devo or the Talking Heads, the less overt garage and soul influences make them sound more like The Make-Up on a meth bender. The band came together about a year ago (early 2009), when Abe Something and former sh-sh-sh-Shark Attack! guitarist Joe Palumbo teamed up to play Palumbo’s songs. Shortly afterwards, they were joined by Ben Brunnemer (former sh-sh-sh-Shark Attack!) on guitar, Sunset Jones on bass guitar, and Steve Goldberg (former Organized Sports) on drums. The band's 7" inch was recorded by Jason LaFarge of Seizures Palace Recording (Devandra Banhart, Angels of Light, Khanate, Akron/Family) and can be purchased at www.thebetterletters.com. by Jennifer Bassett Press ...This is a great sleeve...The A-Side 'That's not all' has an overall nervous energy... the post punk kind with stuttered guitar strumming. Super quick bursts of chords match Joe Palumbo's vocal delivery, his staccato high register syllables that inflect off the end of the sentence...resulting in an un-singalong-able verse. They're little aural punches, the weird oversize suit kind, psycho killer punches. The jerky chicken movement....it's frantic, a little unnerving, not even necessarily lining itself up to be danceable, like !!!, it's got that energy, but not going in for the easy hooks...I like the fighting metaphor...they jab around waiting, not to knock you out ever, just poke around until you go down...But this sounds a little more unemotional...dare I say they get into Devo territory even...or the Units? It's hard not to come up with David Byrne in this case...We don't have any feelings... 'Container' raises the post-everything bar adding plinky keys to the epileptic changing jangly thin electric thin, barley amplified sound. I would even bring up the Futureheads self titled. It's that same feeling, layered unusual phrasing...pure art school...appropriate weird stuff, the influences mash together, but a willingness to experiment in that genre and take it to a further place... --7 inches |
       
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