Tilly and the Wall scrapes Bottoms of Barrels, Comes up with Gold

Tilly and the Wall proved with their first full length, 2003's Wild Like Children, that they could capture the frenetic energy of youth and project it back to listeners through light guitar rhythms, simple keyboard melodies, dizzying vocal harmonies and almost feverish tap dancing feet. Their sophomore effort, Bottoms of Barrels is more focused than the first album, but is just as intense, powerful and infectiously entertaining.

From the very first track the band exhibits its classic ability to make addictively poppy music soulful and fun. Tilly's new record explores the valleys of loss, love and listlessness as well as the peaks of exuberant empowerment in its 40 minute run-time.

The first line of the album's first song "Rainbows in the Dark",

I was kidnapped real young
by the sweet taste of love,
built a fondness for things
that just weren't good enough

immediately grabs the listeners ear, not only with the lyrics but also with the contradiction between the rather despondent tone of the words and the almost uplifting tone with which they are sung. Tilly and the Wall has quite a talent for making sad songs sound happy - seemingly a requirement in a lot of indie-pop these days - all the while weaving a universal coming of age story that could fit into any tale of growing up in middle America.

"Urgency" is an upbeat, lo-fi lamentation of the state of the youth, juxtaposing images of kids selling lemonade with scenes of switchblade fights, prostitution and homelessness while "Bad Education" is replete with visions of awkward adolescents trying to figure out on their own the intricacies of living their lives.

"Lost Girls" and "Love Song" are both slower, more melodic offerings with singing that exudes a palpable sense of longing with the former conveying an intense desire for direction and hope through bare lead vocals and heavily layered harmonies. Both songs are almost confessional in nature, with startlingly personal lyrics sung in naked, purely vulnerable voices.

In all of the soul-searching that dominates the first half of the album, it's easy to forget that the band crafted on its first album some of the most electric, visceral, wild anthems to ever come out of Nebraska. "Sing Along Songs" makes sure no one forgets that for long, opening with

We'll wake up your mothers, we'll start a commotion
we'll take you apart, we'll swallow the ocean
and just when you've labeled us one of your types
we'll fly our flag right up up out of your sky

It's a song that, as the title implies, invites the listener to scream the lyrics back, fist pumping in the air. It seeks to tap into a deep-seeded need for community, for action and for revolution.

"Black and Blue" and "Brave Day" are light songs that take hold of the feet and get them tapping, but also take hold of the imagination drawing pictures of young lovers in the midst of, and at the end of, their relationships. They are not the strongest songs on the album, but act as a good lead-in to "The Freest Man." This track, using various synth effects at a moderate tempo, is a portrait of a friend in the depths of depression. It's what everyone wants to say to someone they know on a path to self destruction.

Just remember you called it all bull@!$%#
well it is if you stop giving into it.
You can walk away the freest man...

...but I've been there too, and I swear to God
if I can help you please, you've got to tell me how
I know you've been away and it can break you down
and I don't want you gone.

The album ends with the elegiac "Coughing Colors"; a beautiful tribute to broken beauty. It is the single most stripped down and exposed song on the entire record. The first time I listened to it I was amazed that a band like Tilly and the Wall - a band that made its name on pop and energy - would end with the slowest song. Subsequent listens convinced me that this powerful and tragic song could not be placed anywhere else.

"Bottoms of Barrels" is not "Wild Like Children" literally, nor figuratively. It is a coming-of-age for the Omaha 5-piece; exactly the album they needed to write after their innocent and unrestrained debut. If this represents the kind of evolution that can be expected from Tilly and the Wall, they may well be on the way to becoming the most prolific band you will never hear on commercial radio.

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