Fight Bite, Emerald Eyes

Fight Bite, who currently calls Denton, TX, home, is an ambient-ish duo composed of Leanne Macomber of The Snowflakes and Jeff Louis of Teenage Symphony. Their debut album, Emerald Eyes, is…something else. If you’re one of the lucky few who’s seen David Lynch’s Industrial Symphony No. 1, mostly starring Julee Cruise, then you can somewhat imagine the dark and sad tragedy that these ten song are capable of making you feel. If you haven’t seen it, then go stand in the mirror and say everything mean anyone you’ve ever loved has said to you.

The look on your face when you’re through is the basic gist of Emerald Eyes. Recorded, re-recordered, and re-re-recordered on numerous 1/8 tapes, the album is somewhat of an homage to Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound technique. It reverberates and echoes and pulses through your speakers and directly into the part of your brain that only comes alive when you’re alone at three in the morning.

It’s a quiet scream of a work, and you’re constantly straining to catch exactly what is going on in any given song. The rewards for your patience are there, though, in the broken beauty of tracks like “Swissex Lover” and “The Accident.” Here, as everywhere on the opus, Leanne’s voice is enough to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. Emerald Eyes treads many boundaries between pop, Goth, jazz, and classic Americana. Whether the claim made on their Myspace of being a religious band is valid is debatable, but their music is undoubtedly straight from somewhere beyond the mortal coil.