Mates of State: Re-arrange Us

The new Mates of State album came out yesterday. I've only been through it a couple times, but I'll be honest, these guys just get better and better every time. The album is beautiful and intricate and melodic and just a delight to listen to. It still has all the same qualities you love about their previous music: fun, light-hearted melodies, tight dueling/synchronized vocals, and touching lyrics. Only on this album they've evolved into something much bigger and brighter than previously done. As refined and full as Bring It Back was compared to Team Boo, Re-arrange Us is easily that much more refined with better production than Bring It Back. Generally, I'm against that. Generally, I hate subsequent albums where the artist's raw sound and emotion has been watered down through post production and too many frills. However, somehow Jason and Kori manage to avoid this every time. Like good musicians should, they actually improve over time and it really shows on their albums. And much like The Shins' Wincing the Night Away and Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, Re-arrange Us is an album from great musicians that you expect to be good, but ends up exceeding those expectations like you couldn't have imagined.

This track makes the album for me.

Mates of State [The Re-arranger]


(I got it off Amazon MP3 for $8. How can you beat that? I'm almost positive you can't.)


MoS blog (that they actually blog in) (a lot!)