Album Notes

Two years after the release of their debut LP, Throw Me The Keys, the Broken Remotes return with Tonight's Last Stand (Room 206 Records). Frontman Jon Leahy is joined this time around by Amy Wood on Drums, Josh Schwartz on guitar and bass, and Dave Yaden on keyboards, and the musicianship heard here is miles ahead of the earlier effort.

The record's title comes from a lyric in the closing track, On The Take: "and though your heart is a dirty cop on the take/ it's bent your conscience but where your conscience will not break/ it's there we'll make, it's there we'll make tonight's last stand." Together with the album opener, Let's Make This Worth The Regret, it becomes clear that Leahy and co. are focusing on an urgent, if some what narrow subject: tonight. Of course it's not just any night, it's one filled with equal parts heartbreak and redemption, and the stories are told with a genuine empathy and optimism that give the album it's unique feel. The album unfolds musically in two sides: side A is electric, up-tempo, where side B is more acoustic, mid-tempo. Where the first half of the album says what it wants on impulse, the second half thinks for a second before speaking. In a strange way it's almost as if we hear the band mature as the record plays, both musically and lyrically.

The band takes a few risks along the way, like the nylon string folk-freakout Shut Off The Machines, which begins with the lines "There's a straight line between forgiveness and revenge/ And it passes through the bullet in my teeth" and the slow alt-country waltz Pages of the Weekly, which showcases the country chops of both Schwartz and Yaden. But the most successful merging of youthful bravado and mature contemplation is a tune called Where The Curb Is Painted Red, a Neil Young tinged track which ends with a confounding apology, "Forgive me darling, forgive me/ even good men carry swords." It's lines like these that give the album its soul, and promise more great records to come.