Of God And Science contains pretty vast subject matter. Of course there are things on the album that don't quite fall into that category, but nonetheless, it's almost everything under the sun. The eponymous album from this Albuquerque group feels all encompassing as well, despite the short span of eight songs. Each one of these songs has a distinctive sound, ranging from songs propelled by swift percussion, to songs that bob up and down, floating in something a little bit more substantial than an ambient atmosphere, but still let me drift on.

The first song, "5'7"" (dang quotes), starts with an engaging drum riff that continuously gains strength in numbers as it moves on like it were a protest march. The content of the song has powerful words treading with heavy drums, rhetoric in sounds that gets me involved in the song. The next song, "A Lesson In Decay" could not be further from that. There isn't a march anymore, but a smooth car ride in the country, the sounds the steady tree line on the side of the road. The car pulls into a bar off of the rural route with too many motorcycles outside of it, where the next track, "America's Queen" is playing. This bar is rugged, like it didn't sleep in a couple of days and has scraggly scraps of hair on its face. When "America's Queen" takes some time to wash up and shave, there's something not so rough under that beard, but smooth vocal harmonies of a waxen chin, like it were a good ol' boy.

The sound of Of God And Science, as said and seen, reaches pretty far. The next song, "Nations Are Cults" might expect some of the riling rhetoric of "5'7"" (ditto) just from the title, but instead is nothing but a pillow of clouds, slide guitar gliding me along through a song too serene to not have cloud imagery. The rest of the album is just as unpredictable, going from love songs to banjo tracks. One unifying theme in all Of God And Science, the trait that links all of the things that come into the scope of god and science is the observation of the melodies. The melodies in all of the songs are repeated to the point that I no longer just hear them as they go by like a stranger on the street, but can really listen to them, get to know them and appreciate all of their little ticks and nuances like they were somebody I really knew. These melodies never go changin', but stay my friend, and the end of the song is still the same song I knew at the beginning. It's amazing how much it seemed like they changed though, that how they can let themselves go, but never lose touch of the ground they started from.

Similar Albums:
Pavement - Wowee Zowee
Elbow - Cast of Thousands
The Shins - Oh, Inverted World

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Paul Bozzo
05.18.2007