Glowing Mouth by Milagres
LABEL: Kill Rock Stars

Brooklyn-based band Milagres has created an album of bedroom pop perfect for a day indoors. Bedroom pop being a perfect genre for singer/songwriter Kyle Wilson, who wrote most of the songs while stuck at home after a rock climbing accident. But there’s no self-pity to be found on Glowing Mouth, the band’s first full-length album (as “Milagres"). On the contrary, Wilson seems to favor danceable, tight songs about love — in childhood and adulthood. Album kick-off “Halfway” opens with bouncy keyboards and features Wilson’s dizzy, psyche-pop falsetto. The mix of atmospheric keyboards, languid vocals, and a ghostly echo make it a charming introduction to the album. It’s followed but the abrasively cheerful tune “Here to Stay,” which is obviously about love. Obviously about love because what else could lyrics like “all the birds seem to sing in the key of H” refer to? Still the song has the charm of Feist, and sounds like it’s sung by Doves’ frontman Jimi Goodwin. It’s a great jam for skipping down the street to or from your significant other’s apartment.

Wilson certainly flexes his muscles on the record, but when not singing in that high range, he can seem a bit timid like on track “Fright of Thee” which features a lower register, but does not carry as much morbidity and David Lynch-style creepiness as one would hope.



The album takes an interesting turn at it’s title track “Glowing Mouth,” it’s much slower and longer than other tracks on the album (the song barely misses being seven minutes long). A mellow, ambient pop track, the song also shows off a bit more of a soulful funk in Wilson’s voice. Layer on top of that some gritty, thunderous keyboards and the track is near rainy-day perfection. The only misstep in the song is an unnecessary passage with strings, which disrupts the sweeping build of the first half.

The band tends to insert some extraneous instrumentation (see the flute accompaniment on “Moon On the Sea’s Gate”), but wanting to extend the band’s repertoire also serves the band well, as heard in closing track “Doubted,” a sweet piano ballad that balances its keys with strings to haunting effect. And the dramatic build on album highlight “Lost in the Dark” is handled brilliantly. The song also features all of Wilson’s vocal abilities. From sinewy, slinky harmonies over the verses and ending up on a triumphant shout of the song’s infinitely catchy chorus, “Lost in the dark, feeling the way.” The moment is especially victorious for Wilson, as it is for the listener as you stop comparing Wilson to other vocalists like Chris Martin or Guy Garvey (of Elbow).

Glowing Mouth’s ultimate victory is that it strides that familiar sensitive-guy pop line while producing several truly catchy tracks, even some good dancing tunes. And their sound is definitely palatable to a world of Sofia Coppola fans and twee teenagers aching for a new band to plaster on the cover of their notebooks.


REVIEWED BY JENNIFER MILLS
JENNIFER’S FAVORITE TRACKS: “Lost in The Dark” • “Halfway” • “Glowing Mouth”

FREE MP3: “Glowing Mouth”
FREE MP3: “Here To Stay”