JC @ Punk Planet
Fans of the New Pornographers will find a lot to love in Morning Spy; the comparison is probably inevitable since both bands split lead vocal duties between strong male and female singers. While not as rocking and power-poppy as the Pornographers can be, The Silver Age is an album full of sweet, dreamy pop music that's inviting and infections.



Henry Mayer @ Space City Rock
Morning Spy is a poppy quartet from San Francisco, and on the band's new record, The Silver Age, the songs encompass a range of feels, from rocking and energetic to calm and mellow -- although even the energy of the loud ones is pretty contained. The band has two singers, Jon Rooney, (who sounds kind of like Robyn Hitchcock, and who writes the songs) and Allison Goffman (who's got a nice voice, dreamy and youthful). They seem to be as interested in arrangements as anything else; the production varies from song to song, giving them all different feels.
A number of the songs sung by Rooney don't work that well, unfortunately. The arrangements are fine, but the melodies are weak. "Princess Vancouver" tries too hard to be a pop song and just gets old. A lot of his lyrics are dorky -- a line like "A haggard rider rode up beside her and said the world is not dead / He offered no proof, just the promise of the temple in the square" relies more on making it rhyme than on making it say anything interesting. The keyboard part is pretty cheesy, to boot (and not helped by their use of the "Strings" setting). Some of his songs succeed ("Ask Us to Dance" is a pretty song), but a lot of them have the same problems ("Sugar Witch" gets really irritating).
The songs sung by Goffman are more interesting. She sings my favorite two, "Foggy Filter" and "Overnite." The latter is their most mellow and atmospheric song, aside from the instrumental closing the album, but it doesn't rest on the atmosphere -- it's also got a simple and beautiful melody and a great guitar riff. The band adds just enough variations to the arrangement and dynamics keep the thing moving but not so much that it takes away from the sleepy mood (particularly with regard to the discipline of the drumming). I'm still not completely sure what the lyrics mean, but since it seems at least partly to be about confusion, I suppose that's appropriate. "Foggy Filter" is faster and more rocking, with a simple, catchy melody and sturdy guitar part and overall, it's just as good a song. In the end, if Rooney wrote more songs for Goffman, they'd really have something. But the songs he writes for himself don't work as well.



Ian Rivamonte @ MESH
This San Francisco indie pop band’s debut release is a solid effort, emitting the sound of Luna with a tinge of Papas Fritas (at least when Allison Goffman sings). “Two Horses” is a good pop song, with a great guitar outro. “Voices and Vigils” also has a similar guitar solo finale that is just “oh so good.” Just when you think that the band is getting slightly edgier with the beginning of “Sugar Witch,” it brings you back to the lo-fi indie pop harmony that encompasses the entire album. If you love indie pop, Morning Spy won’t disappoint.



J-Sin @ Smother.net
San Francisco indie pop outfit Morning Spy landed on the Keep Recordings roster in ’04 with their brilliant and stirring “Two Horses” EP and now team up with that label and Abandoned Love Records to release this full-length. Sugar-coated in malaise and abandonment issues on tape, “The Silver Age” bounces from the lo-fi indie folk that is gaining more popularity in the underground to the obscure art rock that lays out gorgeous pathways to excellence encouraging other acts to follow. And it’s those efforts to not stay within the lines that color this album with such vibrancy. The instrumentation is subtle and doesn’t attempt to outclass the best students at Berklee College of Music, which lends it a tenderness that’s both straightforward and oddly angular. It’s as if they bottled up the San Francisco Bay area’s fog and put it to tape for us all to enjoy.



Crooked Camera
Morning Spy are personal favorites here at the ‘Camera, They made our “Best Of” list last year for thier self-released full length effort called “Subsequent Light.” and for thier “Two Horses” EP And as it turns out thier latest release on Keep/Abandoned Love Records will be a heavy contender for ‘05 and in heavy-rotation untill then. Morning Spy’s “The Silver Age” enters with honey-laiden reverbed guitar strums and the familiar & comforting voices of Allison Goffman & Jon Rooney. Each track is heartwarming and engaging to the ears and soul. The re-recorded “Two Horses” song brings a more upbeat tempo to the track and an overall tighter, more mature sound to the quintet. Morning Spy’s lyrics, especially on the title track “The Silver Age” are so well written that they could soon be affixed to leather jackets and scrawled on backpacks across the country, seriously evocative. The track ”Voices and Vigils”ebbs and flows from conscious bliss to smile-inducing risks closing with a gorgeous minute-long guitar solo. They also explore a more experimental side on some tracks loosely basing it in a conceptual tense, and with certain whorls and mixtures of layers upon chimes & pedal effects. I struggle for bands to compare these cats to, which is an excellent thing. You truly have to hear them for yourself, you should acquire this disc promptly and enjoy as we sure are, Crooked Camera stakes thier rep on it.



George Zahora @ Splendid
Morning Spy have reached a crucial point in their relatively short career: they're ready to graduate from EPs to a full-length. It may not seem like a big deal, but as anyone who has ever purchased a New Order album will tell you, bands that create great singles and EPs aren't always a shoo-in to nail the longer form.

On the plus side, Morning Spy haven't gone the "lazy band's album" route by bundling all of their EPs into a single record. Two tracks from the group's recent Two Horses EP (the Beulah-esque title track and "Ask Us To Dance") made the cut, but the rest is new material -- eight fresh tracks of jangly, folky indie pop. Luna fans who haven't come to terms with that group's dissolution may find some comfort in Jon Rooney's vocals; he isn't a Dean Wareham sound-alike, but his laconic drawl in opener "Princess Vancouver", EP holdover "Ask Us To Dance" and the deceptively twangy, languid "Sugar Witch" plays to the indie-rock archetype that Wareham helped create in his Galaxie 500 days. Allison Goffman, whose sweet, breathy vocals lighten "Foggy Filter", "Ask Us To Dance", "Honeysuckle Baby" and "Overnite", should satisfy the twee-pop crowd -- there's something endearingly (but never fatally) under-polished about her performance, almost as if she's embarrassed to have to sing for us but wouldn't dare to disappoint.

The Silver Age's most important ingredient is Jon Rooney's songwriting; his compositions don't shatter the indie rock template, but they stretch in unexpected directions. "Sugar Witch" abruptly downshifts from a rock-out opening to a sleepy country-rock sprawl (imagine Neil Young on powerful meds), makes room for an odd little drum reverie near the end, and goes out with a cold, sharp stab. "Foggy Filter"'s pseudo-kiwi-pop drone is interrupted for a wholly gratuitous handclap sequence. "Voices and Vigils" would slip smoothly under most listeners' radar, if not for a couple of bristling electric guitar solos.

Overall, The Silver Age is another case of the Fammiliar Formula, Done Well. All but the most finicky of indie-rock fans will appreciate Morning Spy's music; the crucial question is whether the band can turn that appreciation into record sales and concert attendance. We'll be rooting for them.



Jessica Gentile @ Delusions of Adequacy
There is something just so fun about handclaps. Think about it. Visit any pre-school and you’ll see just how often they are used in children’s songs. Who doesn’t love “Bingo” or “If You’re Happy and You Know It?” Clapping connotes glee and an attitude of carefree abandon. And there seems to be little of that in highly pretentious, self-righteous indie-rock world. Maybe that’s why Morning Spy sounds so delightfully out of place with its bubbly, insouciant brand of hook-laden pop. Even on the bubbly song “Foggy Filter,” with menacing lyrics like “The allure was tragic” and “My intentions were off kilter,” the band manages to insert perfectly out of place snappy handclaps. It is just one of 10 mostly catchy indie-pop tunes off the band's first full-length album The Silver Age.

For anyone still mourning the recent breakup of Beulah or Luna, Morning Spy might sound a little like an eager, admiring younger brother, more than ready to follow their footsteps. Vocal duties are fairly split, alternating between Jon Rooney, who sounds much like a less nasally Dan Bejar, and Allison Goffman, whose saccharine sweet, ready-to-please vocals remain surprisingly endearing and rarely grate. Equally sweet are song titles such as “Sugar Witch” and “Honeysuckle Baby” whose titles alone could induce a diabetic coma. Thankfully, the candy-coated titles are actually covering up some pretty dark, albeit fairly cryptic lyrics. That’s probably what makes the album so impressive.

Morning Spy’s ability to maintain a dreamy, jangly sound without ever sounding unabashedly optimistic is what makes this album more than a mediocre rehashing of the standard pop formula. The majestic opener “Princess Vancouver” is a perfect example of this. It crisply sparkles, as Rooney confidently states, “Princess Vancouver, You asked me to soothe her / But she was long gone / you had a dream / to live free, to live free, to live free.” The last lines dissolve into a gorgeous pseudo-yodel and as the propelling guitar chords swell you begin to believe, despite the present despair, that that dream may actually come true, even if the lyrics suggest otherwise, the tone allows hope to linger.

“In the Silver Age” is also of lyrical note. The burdens of youth are smartly recalled over dreamy guitar. “You mention fear is a girl’s best friend / It was hard and you were spent / Couldn’t pay your rent / Your 20s were filled with awful events.” Funny thing is these depressing words also happen to culminate more pseudo-yodeling with its giddy chorus of ba-ba-da-das. “Two Horses,” a track off the band's previous EP, is the immediate standout. It’s accessibly catchy with its jangly guitars, tinkling keyboard flourishes, and less-dour lyrics.

However, as a whole, album isn’t entirely successful. The last two tracks, the mildly irksome “Overnite” and “The Slow March to Salt-White Sleep,” stray from the indie-pop formula of the previous tracks, and they fall prey to unnecessary length and self-indulgent tendencies. “The Slow March” is an entirely instrumental track that sluggishly meanders and never seems to amount to anything more than a band testing the limits of their listeners with five minutes of gratuitous droning. This is a band that should stick to what it knows – sugary, yet somber pop, - hand claps, yodeling, and all.



David Cowling @ Americana UK
The opening ‘Princess Vancouver’ is one of those songs that begins timidly but gradually builds to a swaggering climax, reminding me of Prisonshake, rhyming ‘soothe her’ with ‘Vancouver’ and generally making sense - keyboard drones give way to a huge chiming guitar which is only the head of the duck. Everything else is churning and climaxing; a great beginning. Second track Martha & the Muffins/Blondie, track 3 tries to repeat 1, 4 repeats 3, 5 sounds like Galaxie 500 complete with the combination of vocals nasal and angelic. ‘Sugar Witch’ is a more Americana construction, an easy lope of a song, ‘Honeysuckle Baby’ is a beefed up Marine Girls; ‘The Slow March to Salt White Sleep’ is Explosions in the Sky. It has breadth of influences, depth of intelligence and width of appeal. See if it measures up for you.