Crystal Stilts - In Love with Oblivion

01. Sycamore Tree
02. Through the Floor
03. Silver Sun
04. Alien Rivers
05. Half a Moon
06. Flying Into the Sun
07. Shake the Shackles
08. Precarious Stair
09. Invisible City
10. Blood Barons
11. Prometheus At Large

What's up with that guy's singing, anyway? That question was tossed around quite a bit back in 2008, when Crystal Stilts emerged as one of the more interesting acts in the lo-fi Brooklyn jangle-pop pile. On the band's debut LP, 2008's Alight of Night (as well as the preceding Woodsist-co-released self-titled EP), frontman Brad Hargett often sang in a tone-wary, bass-heavy voice, his vocals cloaked in enough echo to nearly smother his dark incantations. However, you didn't really need to know what he was saying (or, for that matter, what key it was supposed to be sung in) to dive deep into the lonely, dark, and difficult-to-inhabit world of Alight of Night. The band's somewhat standoffish early live shows further suggested the presence of a complicated aura. Even as the clouds began to break with 2009's excellent single "Love Is a Wave", there was still a fair bit of vague menace hanging over what the Stilts were doing.

The murkiness continues to recede on the band's sophomore effort, In Love With Oblivion, but the menace mostly persists-- only, here it feels less introverted and more vivacious, largely due to Hargett's improvements as a lyricist. Save for the macho bellowing that stains "Blood Barons", he's a smarter, more descriptive presence here, whether he's bemoaning losing a winter's love to the "Silver Sun" or surrealistically describing a disappearing act on "Through the Floor". He can be funny, too-- like on "Invisible City", when he sings about crawling into a sarcophagus with a girl before repeating, like a too-clever suspect in the interrogation room, "We know what happened at death/ But I don't have to say why." This is all, of course, only when you can understand him-- reverb still abounds, and whether this is a feeling triggered by lack of comprehension or listener fatigue in 2011, it comes off as a hampering effect.

The cavernous echo that places distance between Hargett and everything else seems especially out of place when taking into consideration how damn good the rest of the band sounds. Joining up with David Feck, frontman of indie pop vets Comet Gain, for last year's self-titled LP as supergroup Cinema Red and Blue, clearly served them well, as the singular chugging force that ran throughout Alight of Night is replaced here by tight intra-band cohesion and playfulness. You can practically hear the tightly coiled guitar line and insistent rhythm in "Invisible City" snap against each other, while all the elements contained in "Half a Moon" sway in unison without congealing into a grossly blaring whole. Also, for a band that might never escape the "lo-fi" tag, this is a surprisingly ornate and atmospheric record. The jarring effect of the lovely, reedy woodwind melody that emerges from within "Flying into the Sun" is offset by barely there harpsichord dithering that creates an enticing depth of sound, while the elegiac horn that briefly moans in the middle of the unfortunately titled "Alien Rivers" adds an affecting touch to the otherwise turgid, seven-minute-plus dud. Songs open with creaking bug noises, car crashes, shivering tonal squelches-- they're thinking not just about the song but also how to sing it, in a sense, and the commitment shows.

What about that voice? Well, as a vocalist, Hargett's definitely made some positive strides. And yet, you wish he'd work up the confidence here to embrace his surprisingly affecting upper register, which was showcased best on the EP's highlight "Converging in the Quiet". When that song made it over to Alight of Night, it was under a different title ("Departure"), and Hargett had dipped into a flatlined, momentum-killing vocal black hole. The fact that this is a pick-and-choose kind of band after only a handful of releases is telling, though: Like their contemporaries and the bands of the past that they lovingly borrow from, Crystal Stilts are a band meant more to be cultishly admired than embraced as "big ticket" or any of that nonsense. If, like me, you're one of the admirers, then there's plenty to like here. If not, well, give it a shot anyway-- who knows, you might find something you like...www.pitchfork.com