In what may be rock's best-ever day job, Thom Moran, lead singer of Boston's Bon Savants, moonlights as a rocket scientist at MIT. On the band's new disc, people drink a lot, contemplate outer space and discuss Schrodinger — in other words, exactly the sort of album a rocket scientist might make.
Post Rock Defends the Nation is both compelling and kind of dorky, a genteel mix of wobbly breakup songs and clumsy attempts to pitch woo. Its best track, "Between the Moon and the Ocean," sounds like music Echo & The Bunnymen might have made after four years at Carnegie Mellon. It's overly clinical — Moran can't discuss the moon without addressing the effects of lunar gravity — and doesn't have much of a hook, but it's inexorably lovely.
While it's tough to tell whether the track's protagonist is a murderer ("I killed my love in the ocean") or just a big fan of metaphors, it may be, well, academic: Perhaps not since the early days of Nick Cave has an indie-rocker been able to conjure up such an effective mix of awkwardness and menace.
Listen to yesterday's 'Song of the Day.'
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