 – On the Wing Now
Foreign Born’s debut album “On the Wing Now” is a breath of fresh air. 
I’m reminded of the vapor of fresh food that catches the attention of the cartoon cat that’s in the alley. The cat smells the food, is entranced by the aroma and can’t seem to function until it knows where the smell is coming from. That’s how I felt when I first heard “On the Wing Now.” I was in the other room and thought U2 put out a new album. Luckily, it wasn’t the famous band from Ireland, but the Indie rock group from California.
With the opening track “Union Hall,” the album gives a false sense of comfort. The song is a rhythmic chorus that belongs at the end of a revolution, with a clapping background section that hypnotizes. It’s all very heavy. You might get the sense that this album is going to be a hard to digest piece of work, but then the song “Into Your Dream” comes on and it changes things dramatically. FB’s sound is indie rock, but it has the soul of a Baptist choir meeting in a coffee house. Now the tone and rhythm is rock that can be compared to U2, but shouldn’t because it’s more than that (even though lead singer Matt Popieluch sounds oh so much like Bono.)
On the other spectrum of FB’s sound is the synthesizer. They harness it so like it was a used Volvo. Bear with me. It sounds great on certain songs (Letter of Inclusion, Keep It All Inside), but it stutters like that Volvo going uphill. The band uses the synthesizer like a drone in the background, but it just dies right in the middle of certain songs. It’s a bit of genius and a bit of personal preference.
The band has put out two EPs and toured for a few years, but now that they’ve signed with Dim Mak, they’re certainly going to gather a much larger following. The guys used to hang out in front of Kinkos photocopying their album covers, well those days are over now. With an album this well put together, I think that anyone who’s in close proximity of FB’s sound will be the cat in the alley hypnotized by the sound.
By Nathan Solis
Listen to the album at Amazon.com
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