na: black heart procession

There are a host of new additions from the weekend that we will tackle soon (Jay-Z, the new Black Dog LP, Gui Borratto, that Justin Thomas Earle that we slept on last week), but for now I’d love to offer an unqualified recommendation of Black Heart Procession’s debut, 1, arguably the best thing they ever did. While the follow-up, 2, makes a strong case on the basis of “It’s a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds in Your Eyes” alone, 1 is where the echoes of Three Mile Pilot, the incredible San Diego band from which BHP emerged, ring strongest, and where the dour-is-me tone comes off with the least amount of effort.

Baroque is probably the most common word associated with Black Heart Procession, and there is something very particularly formal about the music, from the piano-based instrumentation to the ornate structures to the Theremin (What is high class if not the Theremin?). “The Waiter” and “Release My Heart,” the latter sounding like Tom Petty writing a song for an Anne Rice novel, are my two favorite tunes, but there really isn’t a misstep. Forget their later erroneous tropicali flounderings; this is why we all started caring about Black Heart Procession in the first place.