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27, "Holding on for Brighter Days"
27 has quietly become one of my favorite bands over the last few years and their latest album is the perfect explanation for why that is. I'm an unashamed fan of pop music, and I am thankful that there is a band like 27 that continues to offer a reason to love hooks, lyrics, and songs.
My introduction to 27 came a number of years ago when Brainwashed head honcho Jon Whitney asked me to run an errand for him that put me at their show here in Atlanta. I had no idea what to expect but by the end of the gig I was walking out of Lenny's with a copy of every piece of merchandise I could get my hands on. I had found a new band that I could obsess over, but sadly I never really saw the band or heard much from them again for a long time. Their discs for Let the Light In and Songs From the Edge of the Wing both stayed in my car for years as records that I would often go back to when I wanted to listen to something with some soul, but they were never blasted across my consciousness with gig posters, magazine ads, or online reviews like so many lesser bands in the same time.
So when I was recently reviving my love for their early music by putting Songs From the Edge of the Wing on heavy rotation, I thought to look the band up on Amazon's MP3 download service to see if they had released anything new. Say what you will about the intersection of a huge retail corporation and a small band from Boston—the result couldn't have made me happier. When Holding on for Brighter Days was released in the middle of 2007 it was nowhere on my radar screen and now the album is among my early favorites of the new year.
27's most obvious selling point is Maria Christopher. Her voice is sweet, even when the music is less so. She has a perfect lullaby tone that is immediately likeable and inviting, and that sometimes works in spooky contrast to the lyrics and the rest of the band's playing. Her voice is often doubled and spread out all over the mix so that it becomes the only thing that I can really pay attention to when it's present. But when she's not singing, the weird details and varied instrumentation work wonders.
The band toys with samplers in a way that gives the songs some depth without sounding gimmicky or over-produced. Their incorporation of electronics is refreshing for me because I listen to a lot of music where laptops and software exert considerable muscle on the mix, and those records are tricky to get right. 27 has taken an almost naïve approach to the sampler that lets their musicianship and songwriting shine without sample-spotting or plugin lust getting in the way. "Closer to You" even sounds like it could be an attempt at proto-trip hop, and yet it's not out of place sandwiched between the bittersweet "Heaven Owes Me One" and the lush but sad and slow "1001 Gods." In another time, 27 might have found a home on a label like 4AD where this exact mix of sounds and moods and occasional forays into pop experiment would have felt natural.
I often wonder then what a band like 27 is doing on labels like Relapse or Hydra Head, and the cognitive disconnect between a label known primarily for heavy and extreme music and a band that makes loveable, melancholy three minute pop songs may be one of the reasons I don't see much about them around here. Ultimately, I'm just glad that someone is putting out their records. Album opener "Brighter Days" is one of the most sublime pop songs that I've come across in years and it highlight's 27's formula perfectly. The songs are short and to the point, layered with sweetness and a touch of menace and just enough interesting little sounds in the background to keep me wanting to hear them again and again.
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