So listening through this album I'm thinking this is 31Knots, the Broadway Revue. Or, fuck Broadway, this is 1920s Berlin Cabaret, words and music by Joe Haege with Kurt Weill. The first few songs have terrific horn arrangements and all the nimble and aggressive musicianship with which fans of 31Knots will be familiar, and terrific vocal work too. It's a dynamite opening twelve-or-so minutes. My cabaret metaphor breaks down a little bit after that, but the album doesn't. 31Knots continue to make complicated, intelligent, postpunkprogrock, whatever you want to call it. They don't forget, in their flurries of notes and time and tempo changes, to rock. Even the short songs (two of them clock in under two minutes) do about a thousand exciting things. Here's a thought: 31Knots use silence better than any other band going at the moment. And they're a loud band.
There are a plenty of bands that consistently make good records. Rarer, however, is the band that consistently releases albums that are better than the previous, without those previous albums being left in the shade. Sleater-Kinney fell into that category, and so does Wilco. Add 31Knots to the list. For the past several years they've been making albums of ornate and exciting and intelligent rock that just keeps getting better.