Constant Future is the new album from Parts & Labor and with this album the band has created a happy, noisy and rambunctious record that never really takes itself too seriously but manages to really deliver some incredibly catchy songs. The band blends together a mix of some very strong live, acoustic drums with some heavy synths and noisy guitars and a warbly vocal to come up with a bit of a mish-mash of sounds that ends up sounding really fresh and energetic. They aren’t necessarily doing anything revolutionary with their sound, but the pace and energy of the album combined with the layering of noise makes for a really beautiful backdrop to some very solid songs.

This is an album that I’m not sure I’d say that one or two songs necessarily stand out above the others, as pretty much every track has a good sound to it. The album kicks off with the terrific “Fake Names” and “Outnumbered”, two songs that really set the tone for how the album progresses from there. They are noisy and loud, yet really have some strong hooks in there. The sound of the band and of the album is definitely a kind of controlled chaos. They do a great job of making the songs feellike they are sometimes maybe racing too much, but they always find a way to deliver at the end, and really the tightness of the band and the rhytmic impact of the songs is in large part credited to some very strong drum work on this album. The drums are superbly recorded and performed on here, and the acoustic feel of the drums really lends a very real-world element to the songs where a lot of the other elements are noisy guitars and synths. Other standout songs on the album include “A Thousand Roads” and “Skin and Bones”. They show an ability to play with rhythmic new wave type songs and more disparate sounding modern indie-electronic types of songs. The album closes with a great slow-builder “Never Changer”.

This is an album where the songs are all very strong and catchy, with some great hooks in them, but the album is really bolstered by some great and energetic performances from everyone in the band. The real chaos and energy of the band really taking on these songs really comes across really well in the album itself and makes all of these songs a lot stronger than they would be just on the page. This is a very well-rounded and strong top to bottom album from Parts & Labor and is definitely worth checking out.

“Skin and Bones” by Parts & Labor from Constant Future