The Far Cries

Though some of my friends have remarkably good taste in music (cough, Exitfare, cough), I’ve found out about most of my all-time favorite bands from a weird six degrees of separation type chain. My newest obsession, The Far Cries, falls into this same pattern. It started sometime last week when I was surfing Myspace—naturally, instead of doing important work like sending out resumes to potential employers. On an epic cyberspace journey, I went from The Voom Blooms to Apartment to Fleet Street Records and then finally to The Far Cries.

Hailing from merry London town, I initially scoffed at the band for two reasons: 1) their promo picture shows two unbelievably pretty individuals (pretty people don’t feel enough pain in their lives to write good music) and 2) their page listed a cover of “Eleanor Rigby” (no one ever comes close to the originals laid down forty years ago by The Beatles). But, once the music started playing, I heard something that’s really hard to explain—electricity.

The songs just have this intangible electricity pulsing through them, whether it is of the up tempo, frenzied dance floor variety (“Stepping,” “When Your Heart Spills”) or the down tempo, emotional variety (“Everyone Says I’m Paranoid”). Although the songs fit right in next to other post-punk, Brit pop type bands, what sets The Far Cries apart is the dynamic pairing of Martin Bjorck and Liz Holdforth both on the mic. Together, the two make the songs even catchier and, at times, even more haunting than they would be alone.

I cannot say enough about this band, though the true testament to my obsession is the fact that I can’t stop listening to their music. They’ve already been crowned my band of the summer and their song, “Stepping,” even recently supplanted Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” as my anthem of the summer. That says it all, because we all know that Nelly’s song is hotter than the oppressive heat going down in Boston right now.

Myspace: The Far Cries
Audio: "Stepping" [YSI Link]