Cymbals Eat Guitars

Why There Are Mountains (Sister's Den)

By Christine Werthman
Published: September 27th, 2009 | 12:00am

With so many New York bands claiming Brooklyn and Manhattan as their residences, sometimes even Queens and the Bronx, Staten Island seems like the oft-neglected borough. Repping for the fifth wheel of New York City is Cymbals Eat Guitars, a raucous all-male quartet that coats its music in reverb, scream-singing, and jerky guitars, but always reels it in by settling around a catchy hook.

The opening, six-minute track “And the Hazy Sea” blasts off with drummer Matthew Miller, bassist Neil Berenholz, and keyboardist Brian Hamilton playing at full throttle while lead singer and guitarist Joseph D’Agostino shows off a throaty yelp that he can taper off into a soft tenor. At first listen, the vocal begs the question “Is that you, Isaac Brock?” But D’Agostino sounds less like the Modest Mouse lead singer as the album moves on.

D’Agostino and Miller may have only graduated high school together in New Jersey in '06, but a lot of the music salutes the '90s sound of bands like Pavement and Built To Spill. There is something thunderous and all-encompassing about the band’s music, but the group makes a smart move by growing outward with reverb and shrinking down around a melody. Cymbals Eat Guitars does this especially well on “Indiana,” the album’s most poppy track.

The group has enough pop sense to keep the songs memorable and not veer off into reverb abyss, but instead of committing to the pop genre, the group explores. Only two of the nine songs on Why There Are Mountains follow the pop rule of lasting no more than three minutes for ultimate digestibility, while most stretch for five minutes or longer. Each song on the album feels fully thought out, giving the band breathing room to run through freaked-out guitar solos, or build from soft opening to full entanglement of fuzz and back to a soft ending, as the group does on closer “Like Blood Does.” The song shows the right mix of exploration and self-restraint, a combination not often found in self-released debut albums. Especially not from late ’80s youngsters such as these.

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