Press

“Someday, BSL guitarist/singer/mastermind *Jack Sobel* and friends will stop making these exquisite albums, but I hope not anytime soon. This ninth one triumphs *again* despite being recorded in pandemic-related isolation (Sobel even recording/mixing), extending his/their second-act run of remarkable. There’s no *Chameleons* this time, neither *Mark Burgess *(early LPs) nor* Dave Fielding *(2019’s superlative *Vita Eterna*), but even unaided, Sobel can painstakingly project postpunk’s dark nights of the soul. Though Atlanta-based, like New York’s Interpol, he manufactures the muck of Northern Blighty’s misty moors as if he too were from Middleton. Prizes such as “Hide in View” and the Ride-like “The Fear” purr, too, like wet wind-tunnels of beautiful, ill-omened unease. (RIYL Sad Lovers & Giants’ “Cowboys,” the Chams’ “Intrigue in Tangiers,” and Joy Division’s “Disorder.”) Varying rhythms and textures, he pervades this gorgeous gloom with heart and soul (in isolation), engaging effects-accented guitars that seem to arrive from entire netherworlds. Genuine artistry, again.”

—Jack Rabid The Big Takeover