Reviewface #4 with Cymbals Eat Guitars

And so our hot, new, overly-innovative series continues! This week, we’ve employed one of our favourite bands of 2009, Cymbals Eat Guitars, to review the week’s singles releases. We’ve caught them on camera (as filmed by the ever-talented Tim Boddy) reviewing ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ by Scottish amazings Frightened Rabbit, ‘Little Secrets’ by ball-squeeze-at-the-disco’ers Passion Pit and ‘Russian Roulette’ by seems-to-be-2009’s-Aaliyah, Rihanna. And without even a prompt, they invent an impromptu (and very un-Muso’s Guide) rating system quantified in peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

If you’ve been following this series, you’ll have noticed that we’ve been picking our very favourite bands to take part, and it’s a great honour to have Cymbals Eat Guitars in with us this week. Their debut album Why There Are Mountains wraps wild experimentation around a core of bombastic indie rock, and is certainly in my personal favourites of the year. Album-opener ‘… And The Hazy Sea’ is the finest opening track I’ve heard all year, drawing me all the way into Cymbals Eat Guitars’ passages of crashing guitars, noisy brass and quietly shimmering jangle. The mastery comes in the way they combine these sounds so fluently without ever sounding awkward, brash or ungrounded; very rarely has a debut album sounded so intense and bouncy at the same time.

The album’s gaps and ramshackle are what makes it, and it was our honour to catch up with them last week not only for A Chat but also to see how they would deal with the task of being our guest reviewers for the week. It’s more curious as they’re one of the few bands of the current glut to have received nigh-on universal praise across the most prestigious parts of the reviewing world. How does being on the other side feel?

Enough fluent prose, here’s something interactive!

Cymbals Eat Guitars on ‘Little Secrets’ by Passion Pit:

Cymbals Eat Guitars on ‘Swim Until You Can’t See Land’ by Frightened Rabbit:

Cymbals Eat Guitars on ‘Russian Roulette’ by Rihanna:

Wasn’t that fun! Now go on, run along to your record-warehouse of choice and invest in some singles like you used to in the ’90s. It’s a really awesome thing to do and what’s more, you can still totally do it!