First off, let me commend the Michigan quartet Eyestrings on a compellingly graphic band name that's a near-perfect fit for its old-school-meets-new-school prog. But considering that singer, keyboards/trombone player and chief songwriter Ryan Parmenter was regularly listening to Peter Gabriel's third self-titled album (the one with the "melting man" cover) by the time he was two years old, Parmenter's bizarre interpretation of music — and life — should come as no surprise.
For Eyestrings, Parmenter teamed up with longtime friend Alan Rutter (guitar) and then plucked Mathew Kennedy (bass) and Bob Young (drums) from his uncle's neo-progressive band Discipline. Lo and behold, Eyestrings' debut, Burdened Hands, is a quirky mix of Echolyn finesse, King Crimson chaos and Spock's Beard attitude. The 10 songs here — none of them with immediately hummable melodies but all of them containing more words than some people speak in an entire day — require your undivided attention, especially the opening 10-minute song cycle "Recovery." Elsewhere, Parmenter's voice takes on a boozy, good-time tone when he sings lines like "Choke your chicken with a hacksaw" on "Slackjaw," and sounds like an unsympathetic Neal Morse-Joe Jackson hybrid on "Time Will Tell," the album's shortest song with one of its boldest choruses: "And you saw how he turned out/With his head blown out on the wall/Remember the sound she made/When the pavement had broken her fall."
On Burdened Hands, Eyestrings takes its off-kilter lyrics and offbeat music and then taps into a vein somewhere inside of you to take a nice long drink.
Track Listing
1) Recovery (10:00)
2) Itchy Tickler (4:05)
3) Dead Superman (6:37)
4) Anachronism (5:42)
5) Funnel (4:28)
6) Just A Body (4:59)
7) Slackjaw (8:45)
8) Nothing (5:09)
9) Time Will Tell (3:36)
10) Empty Box (12:37)
Total Running Time (66:02)
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