 | Department of Eagles |
One of the nice releases here towards the end of this year for me has been the Department of Eagles’ album “In Ear Park”. Of course Department of Eagles is a side project for Daniel Rossen who is much more famous for being in the indie greatness of Grizzly Bear. It is really such a cool album and it has such a great sound to it, it has really become one of my faves of the year. It is incredibly chilled out and has this old school familiar flavor to it, but also sounding spacy and different enough to really keep you intrigued throughout.
It really sounds at times like an album that could have been made in the 70s and then in the next breath sounds like an album that is unlike anything you’ve heard. It is certainly of the chilled out variety and almost sounds like a sort of bastard child of 70s pop-folk and modern indie-rock, which may sound fucked up but it is all kinds of awesome. There are a lot of acoustic passages here that at first sound kind of basic and folksy, but then they add layers upon it until it reaches a new level. The orchestration they have in here is really cool as well, with seemingly always picking the perfect moments to highlight the string aspects of the record offset against the sometimes haunting vocals. “In Ear Park” is a good example kicking off the album, combining acoustic guitar, strings, piano and layered vocals into something that just sounds sweet. It remains simple and accessible though and never really indulges into the excesses that can sometimes occur with such variety of instrumentation.
They also bring some great modern takes on older style 60s and 70s songs with “No One Does It”, which is a great song, complete with bob your head beat and a bouncing hook line that almost forces you to clap/snap along. “Phantom Other” and “Around The Bay” are two more songs that bring strings and the acoustics together in the most interesting ways. The record does an incredible job of juxtaposing quiet moments against more abrupt indie rock moments. “Classical Records” mixes a slow piano ballad feel with a stark chorus. “Waves Of Rye” is just a great song bringing in some familiar softer guitar but trumped up with some epic backing guitars throughout the song to give it a 70s psych-rock feel to it. The harp makes an appearance on “Floating on the Lehigh” which is another 70s pop-folk ballad kind of song that takes you back to Jim Croce or something like that almost for a bit, but is brought up with some noisy guitars and vocals partway through.
This album is one of those albums that feels like it fits in two different time periods and for that it has this cool spacy psychedelic feel to it while still remaining a largely chilled out acoustic record. The vocals are quite unique and really add to the wide variety of cool instrumentation on here. This is an album certainly worth checking out, and I really keep hearing new things in here every time I go back and listen to it.
