Milagres are from Brooklyn but they seem like a "Brooklyn band" in ways that that extend beyond geography. Despite those zeitgeisty triangles on the album cover, their debut LP, Glowing Mouth, brings to mind that period between 2005 and 2009, when the borough pumped out earnest rock bands that embraced ornate, occasionally anthemic song structures and on-the-cusp-of-turning-30 neuroses.
Needless to say, things have changed since then, as James Murphy's decade-old jab about how "your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables" has more or less become reality (again). One of Brooklyn's remaining guitar bands, Real Estate, aren't really from Brooklyn, and elsewhere you're more likely to find piles of synthesizers and stoner-friendly visuals at a D.I.Y. show, anyway. Even that bastion of wistful, distanced indie-pop, Captured Tracks, has taken a turn toward largely embracing the harsh synth minimalism of coldwave. The sepia-toned M.O.R. Glowing Mouth, then, is almost tailor-made for those nostalgic for the days when nostalgia wasn't indie culture's M.O.-- or, for when tickets to see Grizzly Bear weren't too expensive.
Calling Milagres "fussy" is only half the story, though. Glowing Mouth represents something of a collective split personality within the band, and they're at their best when embracing the high-stakes theater of emotional, mainstream rock. A recent article in The Guardian compared Milagres to Coldplay, which is half right, since if Milagres were half as playful and unabashedly romantic as Coldplay, they'd be a much more interesting band.
There is a sort of distinctly British world-weariness to lead singer Kyle Wilson's voice, though, swinging and swaying toward the rafters while still retaining an elegant, low-level misery. A times, they recall the stronger points of Elbow's catalog (witness album closer "Doubted", where Wilson sounds like a slightly weakened dead ringer for Guy Garvey). If you've spent more than a minute of your life defending Doves, there are moments on Glowing Mouth that are pure catnip.
In the end, though, it's Grizzly Bear's influence that looms largest over Glowing Mouth. There's plenty that brings Yellow House to mind, from the cavernous surroundings to the jagged, obtuse guitars on "For Disposal". Like records by Grizzly Bear, St. Vincent, and the National, nothing feels out of place on Glowing Mouth; it's precise and hermetically sealed to perfection, the kind of reasonably competent mid-2000s mainstream indie that inevitably finds an audience, no matter how small and blog-specific. But while Milagres may sound like a lot of music fans' favorite bands, it's hard to imagine anyone preferring this record to the real deal.
