Geez Kimchee, we get the message — life in the northeast is bleak and dark and depressing. Enough with the slit-your-wrist rock albums already! But hold on a minute — if those are the first thoughts that enter your mind upon picking up The Evening Drag, don’t let the dark cover and song titles like "An New Despair" dissuade you. Okay, so maybe this release isn’t a real pick me up; but it nevertheless is an enjoyable downer, like alcohol!

Unlike some of the other Kimchee releases last year, this album is solid from start to finish — creating an atmosphere of vast spaces, darkened skies, and utter isolation. All this out of a band from New Hampshire! As Jason Morehead of Opuszine.com stated, though Torrez may ‘live free or die’, "the band's spirit resides in some run-down town on the edge of the Mojave Desert, where the blistering heat gives way to long evenings where the only comforting light is at the end of your cigarette." It is for this reason that The Evening Drag has as much in common with the sadcore and dream pop of Mojave 3 and Mazzy Star as it does with Victory at Sea or Helms.

The entire album is dusted by the alternately soft, sleepy, and sultry voice of Kimberlee Torres. Though the tone and mode of the album doesn’t vary much from track to track, there’s little room to complain, because the songs seem to blend into one another flawlessly. This makes it hard to discuss or recommend individual tracks (though "There Are Some Places You Should Leave and Never Go Back To" is amazing, it doesn’t really stand all that far above the rest of the songs). It seems clear after just one listen that the album was conceived of not as a collection of disparate songs but as a forty-five minute immersion into a dark and sadly beautiful world. The Kimchee records website perhaps says it best, when they describe The Evening Drag as "the perfect soundtrack to your fever-dream." Go get it, and dream away . . .