The Pick Brothers Band – A Study in Incoherent Coherency

There is a density to the Pick Brothers’ new EP, Blue Days. There has to be, when you start the title track, “Sometimes you have to make it rain to get lightning in a bottle.” I immediately got the feeling that the music was ready to come together or fall apart, congeal or splatter against an invisible shield, reach nirvana or crash into a wall. If I had to describe it it would be big and coherent in an incoherent way— a coherent incoherency, if you will. Or an incoherent coherency. Disparate forces, possibly the lightning in the bottle but maybe something bigger.

I remember singing the praises of The Pick Brothers a number of months ago, having found a video which I found quite impressive, the sound just beyond anything I was hearing at the time.  

The energy of “Hey Sugar,” the oddly placed banjo, the saxophone combined with the rhythmic lyrical feel and I was hooked. These guys weren’t quite like anything I was hearing and in fact were worth hearing, so I listened and passed around the discovery to little avail. No one bit. I sighed, but I still listened.

They must have felt my frustration because I got a note a few days ago which pointed to the new EP with links to the music and I am once again hearing sounds to soothe my soul. I’m not sure why, but I am enjoying the hell out of this.

The band seems to be pulling and pushing at the same time, the rhythms sometimes broken but cohesive, jarring yet smooth. They are the antithesis of, say, The Eagles who have always had that syrupy-smooth overproduced feel to their music. The Pick Brothers are more interested in pushing the sound forward to rest on laurels. They inject harmonies but harmonies which offset rather than promote the melody. They create disharmony, sometimes for only one or two measures, but always to the benefit of the song. To hear it correctly you have to hang on, to fight your way through the condensed. It is adventurous and just far enough off the mark to make it stand out.  

“Life Goes On” may be the least adventurous of the bunch but it contains some of the best moments— the sound smoother, more emotive, more uplifting. They placed it last, I am sure, to complete the cycle, for a cycle begins to develop as you rinse and repeat. I have repeated numerous times. I will repeat many times more.

The cool thing about albums like this is that each time you hear them you discover newer and more levels. Maybe it’s the density, I don’t know. All I know is that it didn’t take much for Blue Days to work its way onto my “Best of” list for this year. A “pick,” if you will. Get it? Now at the top of my you-have-to-hear-this list.