The Agency, Turn

I remember seeing Dashboard Confessional back when they did the “we’re still bros” tour with Further Seems Forever — Jason Gleason was singing for FSF, and Dan Hoerner was part of Dashboard at the time. The band that played right before FSF was Seville, which I found out was another “bro band” from Florida, featuring Mike Marsh on drums and vocals. Marsh, of course, was also a part of the proto-full band Dashboard Confessional back then, and he hung around to become part of the actual solidified band later.

I actually enjoyed Seville the most of all the bands that evening, so I was pretty stoked to discover that Marsh was part of The Agency, along with Chris Drueke (who shares singing and writing duties) and Klaus Ketelhorn. I subsequently found out The Agency pre-dated Seville as a band, but hey, let’s not get too technical here.

The Agency does remind me a lot of Seville at times, of course, mainly on the Mike Marsh songs — here The Agency evoke something along the lines of Bayside, or The Stereo, just good, loud, driving, pop-ish rock. On the Drueke-penned songs, The Agency come across as more of a Ben Folds-type band, like maybe “rocking pop” or something, especially when they pull out the piano on tracks like “Clean Water.” Whatever you want to call it, both incarnations are great at what they do, and when the guys sing together (as on “Mary Mourn”), it sounds pretty damn phenomenal. I would compare them to Uncle Tupelo in that regard, or maybe even Fugazi. You_ve got two strong front men writing songs that might be a little different — hell, the album might even get a little schizophrenic at times — but at the end of the day you end up with two killer bands for the price of one. If the albums keep sounding like Turn, I’ll always go with that deal.