Album Details

• Artist: The Lonely Forest
• Album: We Sing The Body Electric
• Label: Burning Buildings
• Year of Release: 2009
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2009-08-27

Media

Seattle keeps ‘em comin'. The Lonely Forest, though, are far from regional. Their brand of power pop is timeless. We Sing The Body Electric! Is stuffed with smart rocking songs that would belong to any golden age of popular music. Singer/pianist John Van Deusen  warbles with passion and amusement through fifteen tracks filled with hooks, melodies and a joyful bounce. This is a keeper.

The opener, "Two Pink Pills," has   at least three genres at work here-ambient, broody pop and country-tinged alt-rock but it works brilliantly, leading into the powerful "Blackheart Vs. Captain America." "We Sing In Time," with its-Byrds-y insistent jangle and killer hook, shifts seamlessly into the punky "Sugarloaf," a tune that also sports a kind of gloriously snotty No Wave feel. 

The piano kicks in on the jittery, childlike "Tomato Soup." Whimsy is also present in "Julia's Song," the perfect Counting Crows rip-off in that it sounds almost exactly like that band, only without the messiah-complex.

When a band has the goods, laziness is easy to spot; the last few songs taper off in terms of inspiration,  sounding fairly generic and but no matter. There is enough richness and confident soul on the first ten tracks for a few records' worth. We Sing The Body Electric! evokes the classic as it hints that The Lonely Forest may at some point have a classic in them

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