by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
This year New York City’s Miracle Sweepstakes are celebrating a decade together as a band, an increasingly impressive accomplishment these days. With a pair of full length albums and a handful of singles and EPs spread out over the years, the band continue to grow their sound with their upcoming album, Last Licks, due out October 27th via their own One Weird Trick. Recorded in drummer Ian Miniero’s Long Island basement, the band embrace indie rock, psych, and breezy jangle pop on a record that’s prone to shift unexpectedly from song to song. With the addition of second guitarist Justin Mayfield, the band expanded to a quartet, sound reinvigorated over songs that drift one moment only to collide into progressive territory the next. It’s a sort of anything goes structure, the warm vocal melodies of Craig Heed perhaps the main constant.
The new twin guitar approach from Heed and Mayfield is immediately apparent on lead single “O-Pine,” a song that’s both tightly wound and eerily explorative, as one detached riff is paired with a sense of wandering soundscapes. The effect draws the structure away from its pop core into something more psychedelic, there’s a bit of sinister atmosphere as Heed sings “I know somethings wrong”. You can feel the collapse coming, as the band find their way into the head of the storm, the pieces become unglued, keeping a gentle melodic sentiment while everything else is left to come apart at the seems.