Empty Country: Empty Country II

There is no worse band name than Cymbals Eat Guitars. You cannot move me off that opinion. So, it’s with great excitement that Joseph D’Agostino got some sense and named his next project Empty Country. Much better. Granted, he backslides by titling this, his second album under that moniker, Empty Country II. Come on, man, you’re a creative guy. Let’s try a little harder.

It’s all a little confounding when you actually listen to Empty Country’s music, which has elements of Cursive and Trail of Dead in equal and different parts. Like prog emo poetic craziness. Rhyming is just not for this band. His lyrics are too literate to be stream of consciousness, but there is almost a weird hip-hop cadence to some of those non-rhymes. Just words that feel good together but sometimes make little-to-no sense. And never, ever rhyme. Not ever. Ok, maybe sometimes, but only when you feel like it. And, in some cases, in a really casual, unstructured way by forcing two words to rhyme that absolutely don’t rhyme. Granted the moment you hear D’Agostino’s voice, you know who it is. I’m tying to figure out if there’s anyone who combines his his kind of craggy high voice that wavers into strained falsetto quite like his. It’s an acquired taste that I feel like I’ve denigrated in the past, but now walk into it knowing what I’m getting myself into. Like a much less ethereal, yet much freer, higher, lilting version of Jeremy Enigk. Which you can imagine might grate on some folks. But, hey, he sounds like not many others.

The first track, “Pearl,” with its crazy high note on the word “ascend” to a harmonica solo kind of typifies this album. It feels untethered to anything. Time signatures. Verse chorus verse. The rhyming thing, once again. And the themes, man. The second track, “Ericking” mentions molestation, aliens and Calvinists? Yeah, I have no idea. Other than it all feels pretty damned dark. I suppose when you name your band Empty Country you’re not going to sing about puppies and fucking rainbows. And, look, he does do some rhyming, just not always or that often. And when he does, the phraseology is funky and not schemes you’d see in your typical pop song. There are Also feels like a lot of missing parents. Moms. Dads. Just general wildness. And even some incest, maybe? Inbreddedness. Is that a word? The point is, the themes here are pretty bleak. The dude — NJ born and bred — even mentions the Port Authority, which is a sign that you’ve thrown in the towel (just ask fellow Jerseyites and Port Authority enthusiasts, Pinegrove) and given in to the darkness. With all this, though, there are shining moments on this record. Stuff that breaks through the clouds. It’s a curious entry, but one that deserves further spins.