Augustines

Having dropped the ‘We Are’ from their moniker, Brooklyn-based three piece Augustines’ second album is the most beautifully bruised rock record of the year so far. Co-produced by Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Jonsi) Augustines sees singer/guitarist Billy McCarthy, multi-instrumentalist Eric Sanderson and drummer Rob Allen mixing the best bits of Springsteen, The National and The Walkmen into a beguiling whole that’s all their own.

The National comparisons are valid, and not just thanks to their Brooklyn heritage. Both bands trade in brooding, darkly emotive swathes of sound, like the anthemic ‘Now You Are Free’, a first cousin to ‘Demons’, and the naked soul-baring ‘It Ain’t Me’, Alligator’s ‘Karen’ put through another emotional wringer. Like Matt Berninger, McCarthy is a stunningly good lyricist, who can capture an entire relationship’s worth of emotions in one couplet. “Hey, I miss your skin/ I’ll still reach for you in the dark,” he sings on the incredibly intense ‘Cruel City’, which hooks you into its spiky embrace and keeps you there with backing vocals that beg you to join in.

When they slow things down, they’re equally impressive, as on the Bruce-like, bittersweet ‘Weary Eyes’, the gorgeous ‘Intro (I Touch Imaginary Hands)’ and the porcelain-delicate falsetto intro to album centrepiece ‘Walkabout’, which grows into a hands-in-the-air singalong.

“Have you ever felt lonely, like your hollow heart’s hangin’ in the wind?” McCarthy asks on the incredible ‘Nothing To Lose But Your Head’, while the drums pound, the guitars crash and we career pell-mell towards a cacophonic crescendo. It’s dark, certainly, but unlike their bleak debut, Rise Ye Sunken Ships, where McCarthy was coming to terms with the deaths of his mother and brother, there is a chink of light at the end of this tunnel, as evidenced by the rousing finale ‘Hold Onto Anything’. The sound of a band finding their voice, Augustines is a bona fide classic that gets better and better with each listen.