The New Year
The New Year
Touch & Go

The Kadane brothers aren't in a hurry. Never have been. Here's the third long player by The New Year, released over 4 years after their last album, The End Is Near.

The New Year followed the demise/came out of the ashes of the Kadane's former band, slow-core legends Bedhead, but the "new" band follow the paths of Bedhead, more or less. The quintet count Matt Kadane on vocals/guitars, Bubba Kadane vocals/guitars, Peter Schmidt (formerly "the unofficial sixth member of Bedhead") on guitar, Mike Donofrio on bass, and Chris Brokaw on drums (who's also had a solo career with recordings worth checking out, as well as being a member of Come, Codeine, Consonant, plus contributing to a long line of bands and artists). So far plain, boring facts, what's the news then?

The New Year is another platter with many fascinating and beautiful songs out of the minds and hands of the Kadane's. Mostly slowly floating, slowly building, but here are rhythms and pulse as well. There's a thread of feel-good, even though their song writing and sound are melancholia drenched in sadness. Opener "Folios" is a vintage, trademark Kadane composition - a song slowly building its way, increasing and growing in volume, with a long tail starting before the song peaks. If you know what I mean. As an opposite "X Off Days" is more of a bouncy nature, being sort of 'numb rock', imagine a shyer, more introvert the Only Ones. Or, maybe the Only Ones mixed up with Galaxie 500. "The Doors Open" is a rhythmically fascinating piece, while "MMV" is a piano ballad, guided by a discreet... guitar, taking off as a slow-motion-gliding seabird.

"Seven Days and Seven Nights" is another Kadane composition unveiling a most extraordinary web of delicate guitars, as is the more spiritual and shadowy "Wages of Sleep". "Body and Soul" is another beautiful piano ballad, while the closing "The Idea of You" is a smashing finale. A full frontal, blistering firework (in the Kadane sense of the word) of a song.

So, are we talking masterpiece here, or what? No, but The New Year is a very fine, high quality, indeed pleasing album: it's a 10 song, 35 minute record, which is the perfect running time. And it's a perfect autumn record. This is October/November music - music for leaves falling while the rain drops quietly as the darkness appears.