Empty Country - Empty Country II ((CD))

As the front person of celebrated indie band Cymbals Eat Guitars, guitarist and singer Joseph DAgostino spent over a decade setting autobiographical, emotionally vivid lyrics against a backdrop of soaring and compositionally ambitious rock. After four critically acclaimed LPs that solidified DAgostinos reputation as a gifted songwriter, he chose to break from his long-term band and debut a new project: Empty Country. On 2020s self-titled debut, DAgostinos storytelling lens shifted away from personal narrative and toward fiction; psychopaths, apparitions and deplorables populated a bleak and uncanny parallel version of American dystopia. Empty Countrys sprawling and sonically adventurous arrangementsfilled out by collaborating musicians including Rachel and ZoÎ Browne (Field Mouse), Kyle Gillbride (Swearin), Zena Kay (Angel Olsen), and former CEG drummer Charlotte Anne Doleranged from luminous jangle-pop to scorching emo-punk to narcotized Americana. Though the pandemic curtailed planne