Singer Justin Rice and guitarist Christian Rudder form the core of Bishop Allen, a pop rock band named for Bishop Allen Drive, the street the guys lived on in Cambridge, Massachusetts after college. Rice and Rudder now call Brooklyn home and with a revolving contingent of touring and studio musicians, Bishop Allen are now releasing their second album, The Broken String. It's full of warm pop rock and top notch songwriting by Rice and Rudder. These two paint such vivid pictures with their words that you're sure to have mini-movie playing
in your mind as you listen and get to know the places and characters they sing about.
One of Bishop Allen's most vivid ride comes via a song called "The Chinatown Bus". Like Simon and Garfunkel used to do so wonderfully in their traveling tunes like "America" and "Homeward Bound", Bishop Allen's song details the wonders of watching the "world from inside" and being a stranger in a strange place as they describe the sights and sounds of such far flung places as Shanghai and Tokyo. They get exotic again on the latin-flavored "Like Castanets". It's like a warm island breeze buffeted by layer upon layer of warm romantic sounds you might expect to hear squeaking from your grandparents vinyl. Bishop Allen, though, add just enough bright musical flourishes to keep the song rooted in the here and now.
If radio is looking for a song to blast the airwaves with during the Friday night dating hours, they couldn't do better than "Flight 180". The track soars as Rice sings "If you feel like dancin', dance with me" and it would take a cold heart too turn him down with a solid rocker like this. The band goes slightly twangy on "Shrinking Violets" but it doesn't seem to be the most comfortable bit for a band rooted so deeply in the sounds of pop rock. Overall though, Bishop Allen have kicked out a super solid album full of songs you can crank up the volume and sing along with. |