Millions of Brazilians Half Horse/Half Horse CD Release, Saturday, February 21, Crofoot

I can’t look at the DTE building The Michigan Council of Carpenters and Millwrights Building in Detroit the same way ever again. If you live in Detroit or visit sometime, you’ll notice at night the light display at the very top of the building as you drive Woodward Avenue near Symphony Hall. There are three neon-illumined objects, each lighting in succession to connote the movement of some object–a chintzy visual effect. I think it’s supposed to be a torch lighting something, or something lighting a torch hammer driving a nail. At least it’s supposed to.*

But all I see now is a hammer. Then another hammer. Then a carrot.

I’ve been listening to Millions of Brazilians from the band’s genesis, and boy, have they gotten good! When they first started, they weren’t very good at all.

And if good bands were really honest in their bios, that last sentence would be included in the liner notes to all good bands’ first albums ever.

The amazing thing is that bands get good at all, that they don’t remain several unique individuals, different mental bubbles, like the way they begin. That they create a sound together and write songs that cannot be owned by any one individual member, but must be credited to “the band.” That different musicians with different and sometimes conflicting personalities manage to have enough passion for what they are doing, and enough trust in each other, to grow and become better and create something that none of them alone could have constructed. That is pretty amazing.

Which is why I’m even more awed with Millions of Brazilians’ Half Horse/Half Horse than with any other album I’ve heard in the past few months.

Full disclosure: I used to be in a band with two of these guys. I always knew they were amazing musicians, but I never thought they’d produce songs like this: aggressive yet intricate, these are songs that start somewhere, progress and build, and end somewhere else, taking the listener with them. The songs are danceable. They are listenable in your car, on your iPod. They have enough layers of sound to stay interesting through repeated listenings.

Most impressive to me is that these songs have real character. “Vermont” is the narrative equivalent of a B movie horror flick, but with the gift of a soundtrack exceedingly better than any an actual b-movie director could wish for. The intensity of the narrative and the music that carries it builds frenetically, gaining pressure slowly, then more and more until nearly bursting, when the song then ends at the very brink of climax, abruptly, leaving you a bit breathless, floating in the few seconds of silence before the opening beats of “Only Think You’re in Love” begin lifting you with the steady promise of more heart-racing dynamics and rhythms.

MoB might be the last band you’d expect to pull off a non-cliche’d song about former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, but that’s exactly what “Hammer Hammer Carrot” is. The song’s dirty, almost sleazy opening guitar riff, like Kilpatrick himself, is up to no good. Derek Dorey’s lead guitar delivers a high, anxious squeal, pulled an octave down for a brief rest before shooting back to that high, anxious pitch, an unsustainable high that has to necessarily crash. All the while the song moves forward at break-neck pace on Zozzy Gruse’s frantic, pounding drumming, with Nick Ciccetti bemoaning Kwame’s fate: “It’s only a matter of time.”

“Hammer” is followed by “Armenia,” which I would call the album’s best song if it weren’t such a diversion from the general feel of Millions’ sound. It’s almost incomparable to the rest of the songs, creating a hazy, somewhat euphoric feeling. Most of the band’s music gets your feet tapping, hips shaking, shoulders bobbing, [insert other dance-type movement here], but “Armenia” is the rare track that gets your heart pulsing instead of racing.

“Armenia” is followed by “Oh, Happy Dagger,” “Countdown,” and “Thank for the Jeans,” steady, driving rock songs miring the listener in memorable hooks and enough highs to keep your adrenaline charging through your body and your fist pumping in the air without flagging. And god damn it, it feels good. It’s a rush to the head. But it’s not just pure energy–there’s method to this madness.

To be honest, you really can’t come to this review for a “critical” take on the album. I won’t try to separate my friendship for the men in this band from my appreciation of their music. I’ve seen these songs progress, and this band get better, and better, and have nothing but awed admiration for the final product. So I’m an unreliable narrator, an unjust critic, and if you demand objectivity and a hard-nosed look at what weaknesses might exist, you’re not going to get it from me.

However, I think I can muster one objective statement about Half Horse/Half Horse that you can bank on, and which I can say without the fear of losing any cred in the circles of my fellow writers:

This album is fucking great.

Hammer Hammer Carrot

Millions of Brazilians release Half Horse/Half Horse on Saturday, February 21, at The Pike Room, in Pontiac.

*CORRECTION: Thanks to Gorilla for pointing out that I don’t ever open my eyes to reality and often fact-check using only my imagination. It’s a good thing no one else reads this blog!