The Walrus - Music With Big Fuckin' Teeth!

06/03/2008

The Art of Storytelling, Or Why I Love Bishop Allen

Ever since You Ain't No Picasso started posting about these Brooklynites in 2006, I have been smitten with them. Bishop Allen's awesome EP Project was a prolific feat for the band, releasing one EP each month for the entire year...without a label. The results were impressive, to say the least. The cover art was always beautiful, but it was the consistent quality of the music inside that really left an impression on me.

Like an American version of the Davies' brothers, Justin Rice and Christian Rudder don't just write pop songs, they weave together colorful narratives dressed in themes of love, heartache, awkwardness, and adventure. My favorite of them all is the summery-sweet guitar plucker "Click Click Click Click" from the July EP and last year's The Broken String. It's about an outcast attempting to overcome his feelings of exclusion by comically popping up in stranger's celebratory snap shots...and it makes me smile every time I listen to it.

You can download more songs from their website, but I highly recommend that you purchase all of the band's work, which is available in digital and physical in their store.