Artist: Decibully
Album: Sing Out America              
Label: Polyvinyl
Tracks: 10
Length: 36:16
Review by: Luke Kruse

 

Milwaukee’s Decibully, with their third release Sing out America, have crafted an album that seems to be unaffected by current music trends.  I mean this in a very positive way.  Banjos, lap-steel, acoustic and electric guitars, and various types of percussion give this release a lush and heartbreakingly honest and world-weary sound.  Sing Out America’s packaging, music, and lyrics all imply a band that is tired of generic suburbia. Though the words do not seem to directly attack corporate sprawl in the same way as, say, Conor Oberst, Decibully seems to call for societal change with simple things like honesty, thankfulness, and resisting temptation.

 

Decibully has loose connections to another Milwaukee band on the forefront of Emo’s heyday, The Promise Ring.  Band front man William Seidel helped out with The Promise Ring’s underrated swan song Wood/Water.  While this album is not too similar sonically to that release, the same sort of lonely-yet-hopeful feelings are evoked when I listen to this album.  Sing Out America does not match the highs of Wilco’s much lauded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but fans of that album should check Decibully out.

 

Really, there is nothing major to dislike about Sing Out America.  As with a lot of releases, the first half of the album plays out a little bit stronger than the second half, but there is really no filler here.  Also, I wish they would have included the lyrics in the otherwise outstanding packaging.  From the first notes of the album, I could tell that Decibully had a good thing going with this release.   They even have an a capella number on the latter half of the disc that works quite well.   This album is the sound of the American Midwest.  While there is still a lot of good music to be released in 2005, Sing Out America could easily wind up in the bottom half of my Top Ten for the year.