Singer

The members of Singer represent an all-star cast of Midwest post-art-rock experimentalists, all of whom hail from brain-bending, mathy and progressive outfits such as 90 Day Men, U.S. Maple and Town and Country. But while Singer's songs take cues from late-'70s No Wave and the drifting wooziness of '90s bands like Slint and Tortoise, more often than not its debut, Unhistories, has more in common with the simple, solitary strum of wayward bluesmen like Robert Johnson. Gang vocals and dissonant harmonies propel meandering arrangements from hook to hook, with each song calling to mind a circus-tent tour of oddities. Each seemingly disconnected motif combines to form a strangely unified whole, while Singer's dark soulfulness sets its music apart from anything any of its members have done in the past.