Able Baker Fox

Voices

[4/5]

There was much rejoicing when in 2002, two rough-hewn emotional punk acts, Small Brown Bike and the Casket Lottery, finally celebrated their mutual admiration on a collaborative EP. Containing three SBB members and one from the Casket Lottery (including the main vocalists of both groups), Able Baker Fox construct the best aural representation of catharsis the Midwest is capable of–which is, simply put, a powerful and effective one.

Nathan Ellis pairs his sweetly earnest, gravelly, Kansas-accented voice with the bellow of brothers Mike and Ben Reed. Voices could easily ride that dynamic alone. However, impossibly intricate guitars (“Stuttering”), delicate moments of heartache and introspection (“Blind Writer”) and anthemic bursts (“Twenty Centuries”) push the record beyond one-off status. Voices marches forward, track after tortured track, weary and jaded yet with memorable, biting hooks. Coat it with Ed Rose (Coalesce, the Get Up Kids)’s distinct production textures, and the songs’ stories are put to tape so vividly one wonders if Second Nature pressed the album onto Blu-ray discs. (SECOND NATURE) Brian Shultz

ROCKS LIKE:
The Ghost’s This Is A Hospital

Jawbox’s For Your Own Special Sweetheart

Respira’s This Is Not What You Had Planned EP