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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Tonight AU Will Make You Want to Drive Like a Maniac

Posted by Grant Brissey on Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 12:33 PM

(Barboza) The word "epic" gets thrown around far too often for anyone's good, but the opening song titled "Epic" off Both Lights, the fourth long-player from idiosyncratic PDX duo AU—Luke Wyland and Dana Valatka—has more of a right to that word than most. It's a soaring soundtrack for careening down the highway at unsafe speeds and cranking the volume regardless—all rending guitar lines, pulsing, basal synth, and hyperactive percussion, and it completely belies what's to follow. Not that the rest of the record isn't moving, but directly after "Epic," we're in for a much more intimate and complex journey, one for which Wyland again demonstrates his knack for gathering what sound like the ingredients for a classical piece and distilling them into something much more straightforward. Headliner Zammuto is led by Nick Zammuto (ex–the Books), who owns a similar skill in dissecting pop convention and rearranging it to his own ends.

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What makes people like me drive like a maniac in a number of newer cars is a setting that automatically increases the volume of the stereo when you speed up and lowers it when you slow down, ostensibly there to compensate for the level of road-noise. Gas pedal as volume knob.

All that's missing is a steering wheel to control the pitch.

Posted by Dean Fawkes