Choir Of Young Believers /// “Action/Reaction” /// This Is For The White In Your Eyes
Well: which are they? A creepy fundamentalist collective? A bunch of mad Newtonians? Some sort of neo-American Revolutionaries? The abstract expressionism of the cover probably goes further toward explaining CoYB’s sound than their magpie collection of signs and signifiers—there was a time when they dripped with stark and sprawling figures, a possibly political post-rockish outfit in the vein of oddballs like Talk Talk. Before recording the debut full-length, however, the lads clearly huffed some Brian Wilson: suddenly the harmony saturation is off the charts, the tropical drum circle in high gear, the thickly arranged tracks revealing an orchestral power heavily restrained till now, and often in shocking bursts of freewheeling release. They may have lost some mystique in the bargain, but evolution ain’t cheap.
