True, true—
everything we bring you is fucking excellent, but this gem, from Rhode Island band,
Magic Man, has got us hopping up and down on one foot. Which is what we do when we’re excited about something. We’re not sure why. We’re seeing someone about it.
We actually wrote up Magic Man way back
in 2011, when they were a duo + we couldn’t quite figure out from where the band hailed. Fully acknowledging the risk of straying into the dense, unnavigable territory of wild pretentiousness, we boldly quote ourselves:
“I know little to nothing about the band, Magic Man. They seem to be from Boston, though there’s a good bit on their bandcamp page about recording in the French countryside, so I guess they’re fancy Boston. And, though the name is singular, there appear to be two primary Magic Men, if you will—Sam Lee + Alex Caplow. But despite our severe lack of knowledge on the subject of Magic Man, we’ve got the one insight needed to write up a band…we really like their music. Indisputable fact. Prove me wrong.”
Though they’ve clearly expanded beyond a two-piece, the latter sentiment remains true. And that actual expansion—both in terms of the size of the band + the development of their sound—is what has us so excited about this week’s Song, “Texas”, and the other two tracks that make up the EP they released last month,
The Fox Den Demos.
We feel like we’re witnessing one of those significant steps in a band’s career when they build out from a solo or duo project into something much more complex, compelling, and complete. The result is a fuller sound that still resides within solid, creative song-writing while benefiting from the dynamic creativity of a larger group.
We “really liked” Magic Man before; now we fucking love them.
Listen to “Texas” to see what we mean. We’ve also embedded the
The Fox Den Demos below so you can hear the other two tracks, also stellar. Finally, we re-posted their track,
“Darling”, which we originally posted
in 2011, so you can hear a little bit that evolution from ‘awesome’ to
‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaawesooooooooooooooome’.
