Nurses - Apple's Acre

Another outfit to emerge from the burgeoning Portland, Oregon scene, Nurses (aka songwriters Aaron Chapman and John Bowers) unravel album #2 – their debut was 2007’s Hangin’ Nothin’ But Our Hands Down.

Lying somewhere in between Of Montreal, Arcade Fire and an off-kilter Beach Boys – at least in vocal harmonies – Nurses inject their own cosmic concoction of one-part beauty/savoir faire, to five-parts anguish/regret. At times mind-blowingly complex and self-indulgent, one feels ‘Apple’s Acre’ suffers slightly in the proverbial mix, only ‘Bright Ideas’, ‘Technicolor’, ‘Man of Arms’ and ‘Caterpillar Playground’, let the listener read into their sonic emancipations.

(Dead Oceans)