Brooklyn band Wilder Maker’s principal songwriter, Gabriel Birnbaum says that the group’s latest full-length, 'The Streets Like Beds Still Warm' follows “an overall formal asymmetry, like dream logic.” It is richly textured, moody, and deep and is as distinctly narrative as it is literally experimental. To call it a concept album, as big as that term is, would actually be to sell it short. It is, in fact, only the first part of a concept trilogy that tells the tale of one long night in the city, from dusk to dawn. The album follows a lonely narrator as he drifts down avenues and in and out of bars and hospital rooms. If this sounds a bit noirish, that’s because it is. “Film noir detectives always start out looking immaculate, but by the end of the film they have a torn collar, a black eye, their slacks are stained, and they’ve started slapping people around in desperation,” Birnbaum says. “Are they the good guy anymore? I find this fascinating and I love the visual cues reflecting the internal landscape.”

While there are no visual cues, per se, on 'The Streets Like Beds Still Warm', the record owes a great debut to cinematography. Impressionistic swirls of effected guitar, drums, and saxophone support Birnbaum’s husky and worldweary baritone croon which sometimes echoes Bill Fay. But at times, in all its dim-lit barroom storytelling, one may think of Tom Waits. It’s a comparison that threatens both to mislead and sell short, but it’s difficult not to see things while listening to 'The Streets Like Beds Still Warm' –– perhaps a slowly swinging Tiffany lamp just above the narrator’s head as he’s a little more than half-drunk, scrawling a brilliantly poetic, antiheroic tale on a bar napkin. Be assured, though, this is not 'The Heart of Saturday Night' and it’s not 'In the Wee Small Hours'. In fact, 'The Streets Like Beds Still Warm’s musical precedents come from distinctly different corners of the musical universe. The band draws direct influence from the work of alt-jazz contemporaries Anna Butterss and Jeff Parker as well as ambient progenitor Brian Eno. 'The Streets Like Beds Still Warm' is, holistically, a statement of nocturnal and hypnotic storytelling –– a matter of both style and substance. Birnbaum’s investment in the narrative, which ultimately deals in humanity, is reflected by the dreamlike way the tunes themselves unfold. It could not work any other way. Deeply felt and finely focused, undeniably listenable but difficult to pin down, 'The Streets Like Beds Still Warm' is beautifully strange –– and it feels like just the kind of thing likely to receive the praise it deserves a decade down the road.

TRACK LISTING

1. Strange Meeting With Owls
2. Skewered By The Daystar
3. It Was A Flood
4. Atlas On His Day Off
5. Turn SIgnal
6. And You Want To Be My Dog
7. Secret Weather
8. A Tavern Poem, Passed From Mouth To Mouth
9. Another Bullshit Rodeo
10. They Laugh That Win
11. Escape Artist
12. Darkness Leaning Like Water Against The Windows
13. The Moon Says
14. Hores & Hero
15. Demon Confrontation
16. Fixing The Past Is A Sucker's Game
17. Sea & Swimmer

Ask singer-songwriter Gabriel Birnbaum what inspired Male Models – the diverse new album from New York band Wilder Maker – and he'll mention everything from American novelist James Salter and the NBA playoffs to Thin Lizzy and the delicate tightrope of positive masculinity. These reference points might sound arbitrary to the uninitiated listener, but together they provide some insight into the creation of an album that somehow succeeds at being both an apocalyptic novel of ideas and the most cohesive party playlist that you've ever heard. The music of Male Models was recorded live over several days with a core band that consisted of Birnbaum and longtime collaborators Nick Jost and Sean Mullins. Despite his status as the frontman and principal songwriter of Wilder Maker, Birnbaum's voice can only be heard singing lead on five of the twelve songs. The remaining tracks have guest vocalists taking the mic, unveiling an impressive lineup that includes (but isn't limited to) Counting Crows' Adam Duritz, Katie Von Schleicher, and Jordan Lee (aka Mutual Benefit).

Like guests at a strange afterparty, when you hear these accomplished vocalists recount Birnbaum's tales of unrequited love, drunkenness, and desperation, it feels almost voyeuristic, as if you were sitting in a crowded cocktail bar, sneaking glances at nearby tables. "We all listen to playlists a lot, even us album diehards" Birnbaum admits, "I've been keeping an ever-expanding playlist of songs that I never want to skip, with all of these different voices back to back. I wanted to make a record that sounded like a playlist in this way; it became a kind of songwriting challenge for me." Male Models succeeds in capturing the energy of a crowded party and its accompanying playlist without losing the philosophical underpinnings of its concept. Musically, it also changes shape constantly.

Across the 12 songs of the album, listeners will hear electrified soul, heartfelt folk songs, indie rock, and searing barn burners, all of which are expertly tethered by Birnbaum's sardonic and doom-laden storytelling. The band's unique blend of control and playfulness is established in tracks like the pop-oriented 'A Professional' (beautifully sung by Felicia Douglass of Dirty Projectors and Ava Luna) and 'New Anxiety', which Birnbaum wrote as his answer to Springsteen's classic 'Atlantic City'. One of the most energetic songs on the album, 'All Power Must Remain Hidden' is a propulsive jam that, complete with grin-inducing cowbell, wouldn't feel out of place in a rowdy sports stadium.

Perhaps destined to be the most talked-about track on the album, 'O Anna' features Counting Crows' Adam Duritz on the mic. Duritz instantly makes the song feel nostalgic and warm, while Birnbaum's lyrics explore male isolation and social constructs through the metaphor of Michael Jordan's athleticism. The album finishes with the heartbreaking track 'Jason'. Compared to the bombastic affair that preceded it, the song sounds almost oppressively stark and skeletal. Featuring little more than piano and Birnbaum's voice, 'Jason' tells the story of two brothers and their tense reunion after a long time apart.

TRACK LISTING

01 Letter Of Apology
02 A Professional Ft. Felicia Douglass
03 New Anxiety Ft. Mutual Benefit
04 Static Ft. V.V. Lightbody
05 Surfers Trace Ft. Yellow Ostrich
06 All Power Must Remain Hidden
07 Scam Likely
08 Silver Car Ft. Katie Von Schleicher
09 5 Train
10 O Anna Ft. Adam Duritz
11 Against The Numbers
12 Jason