REVIEWS

"Odd but appealing" -Jim, Portland, Oregon

"Solid musicianship"

"Whoa. Being completely blown away, I have to say a few things. The guitar in the beginning of this song was enticing me to listen to the rest. When the vocals started up, I thought for sure someone had resurrected Jim Morrison...The organs were reminicent of the Doors too...The vocals were the most impressive though. Very little do you actually hear a bands that sounds like it plays with passion. Congrats on a job well done on this song! "- Duff McKagan - Saugerties, New York on "Sweet Potato Pie"

"You guys definitely have your own sound."

"I like it, like it, like it."

"Heavy!"

"I was pleasantly surprised to hear the variety of styles on your CD. I figured all the songs would be like Sweet Potato Pie, but they were all very different. A blues, a ballad, harder rock and dreamy type music. Very good." -dk

"We're anxiously awaiting the next CD. Mark me down for the next one right now."

"It sucked. I gave your CD to my dog so he can bury it."

"....lyrics to chew on....." says mitsy dupree

"....no other artist at work in this medium can be found" raves lou foglia of summer burnt studios

"....so much music executed in so many different styles" shouts g.t of raw vintage

"We can't believe that's you singing."

"If you came out to Pittsburgh, you would be stars and have a huge following."

"It was altogether unexpected, this premature eruption of spring. One balmy early evening, I am sitting in my car with the windows down in the middle of a picture-perfect college campus listening to an advance copy of Inner Ear, the first Inner Ear studio album. I watch as girls drift by in shorts and T-shirts, most of life's difficulties still theoretical, and baggy-dressed boys shuffle past, hands in pockets, mostly focused on theory themselves. I wait for swarms of them to flock to me and inquire about the long-awaited new work from these two way-cool deep thinkers. Yet nothing happens. No one even seems to notice. NO ONE! It's an Inner Ear moment, pregnant with possibility and self-awareness.

I drum on the steering wheel to "None", and it's as if these guys were on the air forever: the same rough, precisely elaborated groove with screaming, post-John Lord keys surrounding the heavy guitar lines; the same complex, passionate vocals modulating through rigorous chord changes; the same lapidary production (even the drum fills are perfectly muted); the same characters you'd never want to spend a minute with, let alone 3:20. ... Yes, it's all there!

"Sometime Yesterday" slithers suavely through a real-life fictional situation, backlit by Dave M's trademark compositional tension between consummately controlled musicianship and lyrical human wreckage. "H.A.H.D.", an obvious subliminal tribute to the man who says so much with one stroke. "I'm THE Man" progresses into a tongue-in-cheek avalanche of machismo, very much a pared-up, Chicago groove that is a hit, a very palpable hit. As a matter of fact, so is "Guardian Angel," a tale of true beauty, love and salvation over a hypnotic, fairy-tale-esque track.

If all of this sounds like déjà vu all over again, well, it should. What else would you expect from a band named after a body part: remarkable familiarity, and much feeling. Dave S. and Dave M. are very likely our last renaissance modernists, and now that we've run through post- and post-post-eras, it seems only fitting that they should show up and sound good. Actually, very good. But right now, Inner Ear marks a timely debut of two creative, original hipsters. As Burroughs could have said about Inner Ear's musical givings: "...never lets you down."