Nothin' PHONY going on here!

Photo by Vanessa Valadez

I guess that while PHONY frontperson Neil Berthier is currently based in Boston, he was also a Chicago resident no too long ago. So that means I'm kicking myself twice as hard for only now firing up PHONY's recent debut, Songs You'll Never Sing.

Loud sloppy and tuneful, PHONY ain't afraid to let guitars rip and crash into each other, fighting to be heard above crescendos of drum racket, alongside see-sawing from low-key melodic vocals that tear into screaming peals of emotion, punctuating the music with a visceral slash through the heart.

There are elements of a bunch of other genres threaded throughout Songs You'll Never Sing, but Berthier is clearly indebted to what we easily identified as "indie rock" in the "college rock" days, before the descriptor grew so amorphous as to not be a clear indicator to set expectations.

Sadly I missed PHONY touring behind this last winter, but hopefully Berthier will hit the road again in the not-too-distant future, since I'm dying to hear how this stuff plays out live.