The lonesome plight of inventors: weeks spent turning dials, tweaking switchboards; adjusting the signal so that the constant buzzing stream hits a pocket, and, as if for the first time, you hear a voice. It is faint and speaking another language, but it is a voice, and for now that is enough.
Amateur Radio Operator's album Sirens of Titan exemplifies the soft moments inside a mind otherwise troubled with creations. Part folk, part indie, the songs in this album could be described as the quiet wave of thoughts slipping away from a genius at work. For as anyone who's written or painted or created anything knows, the thinking mind is a pressure cooker, and the steam can be just as wonderful as what's boiling beneath the lid.
But isn't that just the sort of talent we expect out of a Seattle band these days? Yes, actually, it is. And ARO does not disappoint. Mark Johnson's vocals seem to exist inside their own echo. They're at once brazen and furtive: flirting with the listener from a distance, then boldly grabbing by the ears anyone who will listen.
On their MySpace page, they list among their interests walking in the dark, footprints, and water towers. Things that conjure images of wandering through the quiet streets of some forgotten suburbia: images familiar to any boy or girl who grew up outside any major metropolitan area. There are some empty spaces where you feel that if you were to take a moment's pause, the world truly would waltz past, listless and distracted.
Johnson's singing is complimented by the rest of ARO: musicians who succeed not only in creating a great record, but also in crafting a sense of space. At no point in Sirens of Titan does the sound stumble or become awkward. Every snare beat is exactly where it should be, and the harmonies created between guitar, bass, and cello are enough to make the dark footprints and water towers seem like more than remnants.
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