Vicious

After three years of releasing singles and cassettes that showed off a tenacious lo-fi pop charm, His Clancyness finally released a full-length album in 2013. Vicious was recorded in Detroit in a real studio and has a clarity and focus that were a little lacking on previous efforts. Jonathan Clancy's vocals are a little more upfront, the songs are more straightforward indie rock, and the production is sparse and punchy. It's a lot like a cleaner version of the other band he fronts, A Classic Education. The songs here to extract are the slow-creeping synth pop-meets-doo wop ballad "Slash the Night," which comes with a sense of dramatic danger one won't find elsewhere on the record, the hypnotic, Motorik "Machines," and the hard rocking (by comparison) "Zenith Diamond." Where Clancy and his bandmates (bassist Paul Pieretto and drummer Jacopo Borazzo) succeed the most is when they either dial the tempo and energy up, or drop them both way down (like on the queasily dreamy "Miss Out These Days"). ~ Tim Sendra