Skeletons ! ! !
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Putting on a record by New York's Skeletons and the Kings Of All Cities, one feels as if they are challenging your preconceived notions about pop music to a fight. One senses immediately that they will probably win. Highly inventive, disorienting, infectious; they have achieved a wonderful synthesis, bringing together so many styles and sounds, traditions and whims that though the mind reels, the beauty is unmistakable. Beginning their relationship with Ghostly as Skeletons and the Girl-Faced Boys in 2005 with the release of Git, which Cleveland Scene called "...surrealism with a PA", Skeleton's central songwriter (and Shinkoyo label co-founder), Matt Mehlan, set the bar high, garnering much critical praise for Git's dark funk, exhilarating moments of noise and slower, stiller moments of creepy but beautiful balladry. Following up in 2007 with Lucas, this time as Skeletons and The Kings Of All Cities, Mehlan pushed the bar even higher, inspiring Pitchfork to extend a hard-won 8.2 rating and calling it a "a colossal-feeling record...extraordinary". Perhaps Stylus (R.I.P.) says it best while noting that Lucas, and we think perhaps the band itself, "...feels strangely like the future."
Check out these videos from Skeletons and The Kings Of All Cities:
And download some amazing songs:
Download: Skeletons and The Kings Of All Cities - Git
Download: Skeletons and The Kings Of All Cities - What They Said
