(Caveat Lector: The reviewer and Ivory Wire guitarist Robert Byrne were members together of various bands in the central stateline area in the mid 1980s.) Yeah, and given that fact, I was prepared to not particularly like this debut release from this Chicago quartet. I was prepared to smile and offer faint praise to an old pal and congratulate he and his band on their dedication and devotion and listen to something else I really liked. But then something unexpected happened: on my second entire listen to the disc, I found myself humming along with "Living With The Static", a track deep on the CD, where a staccato arpeggiated riff leads into a chorus with some killer ensemble backing vocals. And then I was hooked.
With each successive listen, my prior knowledge of the combo only from their energetic live shows is replaced by a discovery of a new facet of this incredibly well-produced release: songs like "A New Kind Of Low" (which reminds of the wistful atmospherics of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary"), " Monterey"(with a soft-to-loud dynamic shift at the middle of the song that evokes the dreamier efforts of other pop contemporaries like Sigur Ros and Rad iohead) and "Just Like I Remember It" (a potential theme song for the 'Rock & Roll Moments' section with lyrics like "the miracle of memories/just close your eyes to take care of everything/ no matter if it's been too long/you can go back, just hearing that certain song").
So, it turns out that I don't have to sheepishly avert my gaze the next time I run into my old chum. I won't have to utter false accolades through a plastic smile. Truth is, The World Is Flat is something of a minor pop masterpiece, a lot like the nights in high school I'd sit in a darkened room with only the light from the dials on the stereo, listening to faraway world of punk rock and indie-pop on the local community radio station, dreaming.