Straw Man Army - SOS

The sec­ond long­play­er (ig­nor­ing last year's Her Majesty's Ship OST) by this Kalei­do­scope-ad­ja­cent New York duo sees their son­ics shift­ing in­to a com­par­a­tive­ly down­beat, dark­er and more cum­ber­some, yet equal­ly re­ward­ing di­rec­tion. There's sim­ply no oth­er group quite like them in the cur­rent post punk/-core land­scape and these chaps clear­ly main­tain their po­si­tion on the cut­ting edge of con­tem­po­rary (art-/post-)punk while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­ing per­fect­ly aware of its rich his­to­ry, cul­mi­nat­ing in what to me is the crown­ing achieve­ment of this al­bum - the slow-burn­ing, sprawl­ing Be­ware, which kin­da sounds like clas­sic land­mark records of the Chairs Miss­ing and The Ar­gu­ment cal­iber boiled down to their very essence.