The Out_Circuit - "Pierce the Empire With a Sound"

The Out_Circuit - The Contender (Lujo 2008)

The Out_Circuit - Pierce the Empire With a Sound / Lujo

Radiohead! Wait, no, this isn't Radiohead. Would Radiohead ever open up a record with as much microphone distortion and blurry aggression as Nathan Burke does here on "Come Out Shooting"? There's no making the mistake of Thom Yorke initially, and just as you've been thrown for a bishop's opening in this review, so also will The Out_Circuit's second album have the same effect on you. Radiohead isn't the first band that comes to mind because it's not the first thing you hear. You have to keep returning to the beginning to hear it all together.

So let's return to the beginning of The Out_Circuit and see how Seattle transplant Burke arrived at Pierce the Empire With a Sound. In 2003 Nathan was living in Washington DC and had just completed work on his first album, Burn Your Scripts, Boys. Since then, he has gained friends in bands such as Coalesce and Beauty Pill, but the most critical bonds were forged with Thrice folkster Dustin Kensrue, because that band's mixmaster, Teppei Teranishi, also works behind the boards here. "Beauty" is the key adjective Lujo is using to describe this follow-up, and for the majority of the record Teranishi's touch blends numerous guest appearances and Burke's own songwriting together to make the overall album much more cohesive.

It doesn't sound like an overtly flawed or childish display of anger, with the possible exception of "The Fall of Las Vegas." Blending hardcore vocals with ambient electronics is always a breezy tightrope to walk across (Just ask the sequentially increasing success with this technique by Idiot Pilot, Thursday on War All the Time, or labelmates History Invades), so the fact that textures take control of this album makes it easier to digest the occasional outbursts of anger. Even still, after listening to it multiple times, it still feels like Kid A's younger, less emotionally deranged brother. The pathos here is clear, even if the lyrics aren't.

The album art is a simple but emphatic display of what this record is all about. It is planets away, somewhere else, with giant, echoing guitars that have been compared to Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine... But inside that towering behemoth of a fortress sits a singer/songwriter record dressed up by soaring heights of steel and layers of gentle synthesizers borrowed from Vangelis. "New Wine" is an excellent example of this heart-on-sleeve mentality exposed to its very core. It's an emotionally wrought record, but if there's anything Burke has been smart about, it's not laying it on too thick one way or the other.

This is the other great tightrope The Out_Circuit walks on Pierce the Empire With a Sound. By carefully balancing breathy vocals and emo's softer moments with the technological acumen of a group like, well, Radiohead, this album plays marvelously as post-hardcore after dark. "The Contender" demonstrates this duality best, but in the latter half of the record, an uneasy peace presides.

"Scarlet" is like walking along a lonely dock in the middle of a giant metropolis during the dead of night as tugboats pass by quietly. There could be no better ending to an album that struggles with keeping its louder bits in check. Lujo has been one of my preferred labels in recent years, and this release continues a strong run in experimenting with what is and is not noisy - and what happens when loud decides not to go loud any longer. Quietly, during the dead of night, The Out_Circuit slips by. Don't miss them.