CD Reviews

Age Rings | Black Honey

Self-released (2011)

By JONATHAN DONALDSON | May 19, 2011

3.0 Stars

With the MP3 emerging as the king format these days, anything longer than a 40-minute CD is just too long. Consequently, Boston-based Age Rings' new 80-minute double CD of original music (their sophomore release) can be considered everything from ballsy and impressive to over-indulgent and arrogant — which are also the very virtues expressed in the music. Despite its length (additionally tested by the presence of the same singer, Ted Billings, on every track), Black Honey has enough gems to engage you throughout. Disc one stands out on its own, with killer productions like the lemony mellotron/Britpop meringue "Birthday Song," in which songwriter Billings overlaps swatches of his sparkly vocal melodies with a hip-shaking groove. Not to be contained, the dark-pop shuffle of "A Crack in the Porcelain" goes after a different vibe. Having paid so much attention to getting their tight, layered studio sound into their slightly bored and sordid tales of late-night partying in Boston (as in "Ups and Downs" and "Birthday Song"), Age Rings (who also include former Phoenix staffer Will Spitz) come across as a little shallow. If you're going to be shallow, you have to be convincing — and Age Rings' melodies and hooks convince in a big way.

AGE RINGS + TAXPAYER + PRETTY & NICE + YOU CAN BE A WESLEY | Middle East upstairs, 472 Mass Ave, Cambridge | May 21 @ 9 pm | 18+ | $10 | 617.864.3278

Topics: CD Reviews , Boston, Music, Pop, More

| More

Add Comment

HTML Prohibited

Friends' Activity

Popular

Most Viewed

See more deals

view all

[ 05/24 ] Chandler Travis Philharmonic @ Lizard Lounge

[ 05/24 ] P.M. Allen, Melanie Blood, Steven Muller, and Aaron North @ Hallway Gallery

[ 05/24 ] "Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey" @ Boston Athenæum

ARTICLES BY JONATHAN DONALDSON

AGE RINGS | BLACK HONEY | May 19, 2011
With the MP3 emerging as the king format these days, anything longer than a 40-minute CD is just too long.

A REUNITED PAPAS FRITAS FIND THEIR WAY HOME | May 12, 2011
The road from the first basement jam session to the indie-record deal isn't always clearly delineated with reflectors and mile markers — but hindsight usually reveals some kind of plan.

FROM AFAR, DESTRY BRING VINTAGE ALLURE TO BOSTON | May 06, 2011
When Destry's Michelle DaRosa tells me she grew up watching musicals excessively, I find myself listening to her singing voice just to see what type of musical heroine she'd be.

JULIAN LYNCH | TERRA | May 06, 2011
Although experimentation in music nowadays is certainly in vogue, there aren't many records that will straddle the line between commercial plausibility and healthy art-for-art's-sake like Julian Lynch's Terra.

NEUTRAL UKE HOTEL STRUM GAILY OVER THE SEA | April 13, 2011
Shawn Fogel of Golden Bloom knows that his latest stage act is a formula for potential enormous suckitude. Take one of indie rock's sacred cows — Neutral Milk Hotel's 1999 album In the Aeroplane over the Sea — and play the whole thing, straight through, on ukuleles. Then have the audacity to call it Neutral Uke Hotel.

See all articles by: JONATHAN DONALDSON

Most Viewed

Most Emailed

GOD HATES FAQS
Editors' note: We selected David S. Bernstein to serve as our resident Rapture expert, on account of his having seen all three Kirk Cameron Left Behind series film adaptations.

INTERVIEW: ETERNAL EARTH-BOUND PETS FOUNDER BART CENTRE
Pets — no matter how cuddly — lack souls. While their pious masters are frolicking with Jesus, loyal puppies, adorable kitties, and stalwart goldfish will find themselves alone in a terrifying hell on Earth.

STORMING NEW YORK WITH HAROLD CAMPING'S RAPTURE WARRIORS
I'm riding shotgun through Times Square in a flatbed truck draped with placards, advertising the impending End of Days: HAVE YOU HEARD THE AWESOME NEWS?

ROB BELL FREAKS OUT EVANGELICALS
Saved by the bell

BLISS OF RAPTURE
Okay, I'm not happy , exactly, that, as a Jew, I am excluded from Saturday's date with Heaven's eternal rewards, and will instead be left to suffer through great tribulations before perishing, with the rest of the Army of the Antichrist, as a dismembered corpse beneath a waste-deep river of blood.

GOD HATES FAQS
Editors' note: We selected David S. Bernstein to serve as our resident Rapture expert, on account of his having seen all three Kirk Cameron Left Behind series film adaptations.