5 out of 5

Label: Overcoat

Producer: Jerry Kee

God damn, I’m gonna’ have to blame the new guitarist and drummer.  Because suddenly, on their third album, Kingsbury Manx fine tune their dusty, dour folk into this sharp, propulsive 100% toe-tapping head-nodding album of excellence, somehow holding on to the harmony / 70s Americana qualities that made them press darlings but realizing the plugged-in elements that would just barely peek through on albums 1 and 2.  That’s not to say that ‘Aztec’ is swilling in distortion or anything.  Not at all.  Just that the boys seem to grow up a bit, no longer playing tributes to their dad’s records but writing these songs like they own them.  There are just little changes that add up to a huge difference.  Bill Taylor’s sweet vocals are steadied, no longer fuzzed out by layering of several people swooning the same lines – instead the backup vocals coming in to chant supportive lyrics or selectively harmonizing for emphasis.  Whether it’s just a seeming result of this or an actual change I guess I can’t say, but with the lyrics mixed more front and center, they seem a bit weightier.  The writing is still vague, with occasional winky quirks and a balancing act between sorta sad and sorta shrug it off, but I actually remember words and lines and not just how the singing sounds, if that makes sense.  Several songs also actually build on themselves, which only really happened on one or two tracks on the previous albums, either using bridges to segue into different sections of a song, or keys or other noodly sounds working their way in.  And then the drumming.  The drumming on self-titled and Let You Down was very laid back, just something to keep pace.  But here it’s a driving force in the songs.  Whether we have one songwriter or it’s a team effort, the new group members have absolutely shaped the sound in some way, and though the directness on Aztec would mellow out for the following albums, the players all have a more notable presence from here on out.  The sleepy folk does make an appearance on the last track, but as it stands alone as a contrast to the more upbeat stuff for the 9 previous songs, it works as a great comedown for the album.

Also the cover art is my fave, a fitting middleground ‘tween the more patchy art style of albums one and two and the photos they would start using thereafter, which we’ll say is more realistic (duh).  Also fitting is that with album 1 and 2’s art sorta representing day and night, respectively, and the moods we’d associate with those parts of the day resonating over each album, ‘Aztec’s painting is of either sunrise or sunset.  Make of that what you will.

(…Note that I haven’t heard the 2013 album yet, which looks like a painting again… so who knows if I’ll be able to muddle through my desire for matching themes and evolution over a band’s lineage with whatever that album will do for me…)