Listening to Long Island's As Tall as Lions, I couldn't help thinking the band must feel caged in by its tour itinerary of small clubs. On their self-titled, sophomore release, ATAL's polished pop sounds like the work of a band starved for its moment in the spotlight. Aided by producer Steven Haigler, who engineered and mixed several Pixies albums, the band sounds huge. His labor-intensive approach to recording-- loads of minute sonic detail and layers of overdubs-- creates a rich tapestry of sounds, but it also comes across as smoke-and-mirrors, a flashy package more dazzling than the songs it dresses up.
That said, singer Daniel Nigro and his vocal pyrotechnics have been compared to Jeff Buckley-- particularly on the stale soul of album-seller "Love, Love, Love (Love, Love)". Like Buckley, Nigro reaches for expressive heights and never shies from falsetto, but his register is closer to an emo-whine than a shimmering croon. As airy as his vocals are, his lyrical musings are equally weightless. Whether finishing phrases with cursory Spanish in "Song for Luna" or lamenting "even when I find the love, it's fake/ And everything I want to touch would break" on opener "Stab City", Nigro's words are confined to the horse-blinded scope of teenaged feelings. And when he sings lines like, "I'm an anthropophobiac/ A wolf from the steps/ With pills in my coat/ And wine on my breath," it's like a game of telephone with Nigro channeling Chris Martin channeling Thom Yorke.
Like Coldplay, ATAL trade in the emotional sucker-punches of soaring choruses and crushing crescendos. The album's best song, "Ghost of York", explodes with an insidiously catchy chorus and monstrous guitar chords. It's an alluring song, but with its galloping rhythm section, twinkling guitar arpeggios, and on-a-dime stops and starts, it sounds deliberately constructed to fit neatly into the landscape of modern rock radio. And these days, that's not the place to be looking for inspiration.
