Doubting Thomas Cruise Control
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Doubting Thomas Cruise Control

New York City, New York, United States | SELF

New York City, New York, United States | SELF
Band Rock Alternative

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"Doubting Thomas Cruise Control - Builds press release"

¬¬Builds, the debut from Brooklyn-based quartet Doubting Thomas Cruise Control, is a versatile record that succeeds in a number of ways: this is a lyricist’s album, a guitar player's album, a lo-fi surprise. The latest project of über-prolific songwriter Bobby Cardos, Builds is a complex collection of serrated pop songs, a matrix of repeating themes that suggest an architecture not unlike that of a haunted house. Comprised of antique studies and endless hallways built for wondering and wandering, Builds hovers at the intersection of history and intrigue, and Cardos uses this sonic stage to play out his chronicles of dreamy discontent.

For an album of such maturity and ambition, Builds moves briskly. Cardos has a deft sense of pop-song structure and keeps most of his ghost stories under three or four minutes. In contrast to many of his peers, Cardos doesn’t fetishize styles or rely on gimmicks to lay the foundation for his songs; instead, his compositions sound committed only to themselves and the intertextuality of the record as a whole. At the core of each song (and the album generally) is a composite of warm melodies courtesy of Cardos and guitarist Sean Kelly, who adds elegant and understated gliss to highlight the oft-obscured, slightly skewed vocals. Kelly is the DTCC’s hidden trump card, a lead guitarist committed to dynamic compliments instead of garnish, and a suitable foil for Cardos’s minor-keyed musings. Fellow comrades Joe McCarthy and Chris Sprindis comprise the kind of soulful and unpretentious rhythm section that should make most of their contemporaries hiss with jealousy, with drummer McCarthy’s background vocals adding ethereal gold sounds to Cardos’s woozy narrations.

The DIY aesthetic has been genre-appropriated throughout all of popular music: hip-hop, soul, even the world of Billboard Top 40… But nowhere does its sound ring so true as with the sincere sonics of a record like this. Recorded to a vintage Tascam 488 cassette deck using working-man’s microphones and gussied up in a Bed-Stuy bedroom, Builds feels as casual as it does carefully crafted. This is the sound of a band fully committed to the work of songwriter at the top of his game, and as strong a debut as any to come in 2012.

-Benham Jones, Former DJ, WFUV - Independent Press Release


Discography

Nostalgische Mode (EP) - 2010
History et al (Single) - 2012
Builds (LP) - 2012

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