Straylight Run

The Needles The Spacee

[4/5] Straylight Run’s self-titled 2004 debut was intriguing for what it wasn’t; that is, Taking Back Sunday reloaded. Its follow-up, The Needles The Space, purely excites for what it is, an adventurous waltz through styles and moods that ditches the sometimes deliberate songwriting of album one in favor of transcendent harmonies, ear-raising counter-melodies, varied instrumentation (Glockenspiel, anyone?) and organic vocal interplay between sibs John and Michelle Nolan. The latter’s emergence is especially striking and, frankly, it’s unwise to brave her performance on “The Miracle The Never Came” or the ruminative “How Do I Fix My Head” without a helmet, because you will fall. Hard. Most impressive is that The Needles The Space leaves Straylight Run’s future wide open-significant since it also renders their present immune to stitches in time or measures of space. (UNIVERSAL REPUBLIC) Tristan Staddon