The Whiskers, The Distorted Historian

I popped this shit in my CD player and genuinely knew within the first 30 seconds that this would not be a one-and-done listening. Not that I knew I was going to love it — rather, that it was going to be one of those CDs where you really didn’t know what to make of it at first. That’s still a good sign. It made me uncomfortable, and it was on the fringes.

Imagine the guy from Crash Test Dummies doing his best to emulate the singer from Wolf Parade, then getting together with a goth chamber pop group, spitting out carnival tunes (case in point: “Sails”). Not exactly party music, but it’s definitely a step outside the lines of most modern indie-rock. It’s a mustache-scratching experiment of the highest order (see what I did there?).

The rumor is that these guys pieced together this album without even stepping in the same room together. I’m not buying that (at least two band members are related). Truth be told, a lot of the shit on this album seems like a couple guys dicking around — but I’ll bet money you will be hearing bigger and better things from these guys in the near future.