Ask a music snob to list some enduring ‘70s bands and you might get anyone from Allman to Zeppelin. But lost amidst all the “authentic” or “influential” artists will likely be the string-laden pop of groups like Yes, Roxy Music and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, relegated to the guilty-pleasure bin of cultural consciousness despite enormous commercial success.
Well Brooklyn’s the Silent League remember these forgotten giants and are here to remind the world of the music critical acclaim forgot. Their symphonic makes no attempt to hide its roots -- after all, only three songs into their latest album, But You’ve Always Been the Caretaker, they bust out an ELO cover (“Yours Truly, 2095”) without a trace of irony.
Mercury Rev’s Justin Russo and Stars Like Fleas’ Shannon Fields formed the Silent League in 2004 to spread their shared love of Bread, Todd Rundgren and, yes, ELO. Since then they’ve recorded three critically-acclaimed albums of orchestral joy with a rotating cast of semi-anonymous characters, trying to hold the pieces together as members are constantly whisked off to join admirers like Calexico and Beirut.
Their third album, Caretaker scales its grand peaks with epic strings, towering choruses and ethereal harmonies. “Here’s a Star” builds a quiet piano melody to a climactic David Bowie finish while “When Stars Attack!!!” sounds like Neil Young going through his little-known Arcade Fire phase. Each song resonates like a time capsule from some idealized past, a little nugget of happiness blissfully naïve to the troubled world around it.
Mixed among the ambitious statements are oddly-titled instrumentals like “Egg Shaped” and “How and Why Our Dads Lost the War,” but with a sound this majestic the lack of words hardly registers. The soaring strings say it all.
But You’ve Always Been the Caretaker is out today via Something In Construction.
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