American Analog Set
KNOW BY HEART
(TIGER STYLE)

On Know by Heart, this Austin band’s fourth album, singer/guitarist Andrew Kenny and his cohort scale back the epic soundtracks they’ve been making since the mid ’90s, when gorgeously blissed-out tone poems like 'Waking Up Is Hard To Do' offered a stateside answer to Stereolab and Spiritualized. Here, American Analog Set focus on warm, fuzzy, acoustic-based pop songs that skirt indie-rock clichés by folding in traces of the way-out sonics that used to define their work. Opener 'Punk As Fuck' sets the stage, as strummed acoustic guitar, electric keyboard, bell-like vibes, and a lightly brushed snare melt together in a harmless, head-nodding groove. And 'The Kindness of Strangers' one-ups that, conjuring a sort of Tortoise-for-tourists vibe in which a pretty, circular guitar riff dances around another string of somnolent vibes.

Issue Date: January 3 - 10, 2002

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