Electric President – S/T

.....Take a couple of young men from Jacksonville, Florida in their early 20s who write well crafted acoustic songs with age-incongruent lyrical sensitivity and give them some fun new electronics and watch what happens. After three self-produced and vaguely existent embryonic experiments, Germany’s Morr is the benefactor of this teeth-achingly good effort. Beginning the songs acoustically, as usual, Ben Cooper and Alex Dane then set to sewing up the electro accoutrements to dress them dandily. The finished models are not martini bar/dance club disco-lite but 21st century porch swing indietronica. Comparisons to Ben Gibbard/Postal Service are inevitable (see, I just made one here), but Cooper also has the wounded heart and nasal vulnerability of John K. Samson. So much so that closer, “Farewell,” could be dropped onto the end of the last Weakerthans album without shifting balances. “Ten Thousand Lines,” “Grand Machine No. 12” and “Snow on Dead Neighborhoods” are a trifecta of gems so well crafted Charm jewelers would stroke out hearing them. If it finds its way into the right hands / onto the right TV show, Electric President could run onto a lot of year-end lists.

(Morr Music)