SUMMER HYMNS - Backward Masks Review

Someday when I’m an aged, graying rock scribe, my grandchildren will cluster around me after we open the Hanukkah presents and beg for a story. “Tell us the one about indie rock in 2006!” they’ll cry. I’ll roll my eyes and offer a hearty laugh, then tell them the story of the emperor’s new clothes instead. If anything, the story of 2006 has been that of the non-story. There was no word from the rock’s most relevant acts -- Radiohead toured, Wilco played a new song on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and everybody’s favorite life-changers in the Arcade Fire and the Shins spent the year in the studio....full text You could be forgiven to mistaking Backward Masks, the fourth full-length from Athens, Georgia’s Summer Hymns, for a hammock record, something dreamy and pretty undemanding, the perfect foil for lazy afternoons. Indeed, the songs slip by in a narcotic haze, soft guitar chords and Zachary Gresham’s gentle, careworn voice reminding you of acoustic Neil Young. ...full text To describe the majority of this album, let's imagine it's Saturday afternoon and you're bored as hell sitting on your mom's couch, the one with the plastic cover, and watching the crap they call quality programming on TV, while wearing nothing but boxers and a wifebeater. You're sitting there watching this pitiful excuse for a Saturday afternoon movie from 1972 and it's playing background music while some bellbottom-exhibiting hippie is walking through a park, with a brooding, pensive expression on their face, etc....full text