Antarctica Takes It!

There's something almost biblical about the lyrics on Antarctica Take's It!'s debut album, The Penguin League. Take away the lo-fi recording and Page France sounding instrumentation and you'll find a lyrics sheet that reads like a modern day prophet's text. Much like a 21st century gospel writer, lead singer Dylan McKeever reveals "I have come here to destroy everything that you held dear." Thankfully for us, it looks like his wrath takes the form of beautiful, stripped-down indie pop instead of the fire and brimstone kind. ------------------------------------------------ Antarctica Takes It are from Santa Cruz, CA, and I just got their lovingly-handmade-packaged homebrewed album, The Penguin League. This is dance and sing, hug your friends, march around, kiss the girl, clap your hands (and say yeah) kind of music. I once referred to Richmond, VA's Great White Jenkins as "A Jake-Legged, Brokedown, Marching Symphony," and I'm gonna christen Antarctica Takes It "A Jake-Legged, Brokedown, Marching Symphony...On Uppers." ------------------------------------------------ Acompanied by acoustic guitar, glockespiel, horns, tambourine, accordian, violin, cello and more, songwriter Dylan McKeever comes across as a sort of Michael Nau in training, spinning wonderfully colorful stories about love, weather and frozen continents, among other things. I'm interested to see what's up the road for these guys, but they're definitely a pop band to keep your eye on. Highly recommended for fans of Page France, Lil' Hospital, et al. "Antarctica", the longest running track on the album, clocking in at 4:12, is clearly the albums the climax, and also it's biggest success. In it's mere four minutes it moves through about 4 or 5 seperate movements, all flowing perfectly into one another. The song opens lightly with acoustic guitar, introducing the chilly continent and how it stole their hearts: "We traced shapes across the starry skies, made our way through each tender night, we heard the weary whales too, and sang along with the silver moon, Antarctica you stole our hearts." Just after that the song throws it into gear taking you through detours and down back roads until you finally reach the end. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.