Last Leaves - Other Towns Than Ours

The Lucksmiths signed off 9 years ago with First Frost, singing "here's to who knows what" on South-East Coastal Rendezvous. The what, musically, was a shift towards noisier rusticism that looked more to the American underground than it did to their own indiepop ancestors.

If First Frost was only a partial shift - it includes a song called The National Mitten Registry, for fuck's sake - it closed the chapter called "The Lucksmiths" and suggested there was another story to be written.

Which is where the Last Leaves and Other Towns Than Ours comes in. It does what First Frost did - gets its hands dirty, edges backwoods Americana into the late evening sun, wonders what The Byrds might have done if Neil Young had joined instead of Gram Parsons - only better and with bigger riffs.

Old habits die hard - Something Falls is indistinguishable from The Lucksmiths (I'm definitely not complaining) - but this album has the freshness and vitality of a new band. I can imagine hearing these songs on the radio and seeing this band on a big festival's bill. The more I listen to this album the more I like it.