CMJ Review of The 3 Way

CMJ New Music Monthly
Best New Music
Lilys
The 3 Way

Let's ad this mathematically: The 3 Way clocks in at just over 36 minutes. Eleven of those minutes contain five ecstatic blasts of '60s British Invasion guitar riffs, Nuggets-style organ lines, and soaring layered harmonies, in the tradition of the Lily's superb 1996 disc "Better Can't Make Your Life Better". "Dimes Make Dollars" opens the album with a garage band riff, shared among fuzzy guitars and organ, that will tempt you to frug or pony or at least do the hand-jive. "A Tab For The Holiday" ends the album with a very Kinks-like jaunty jingle, complete with what sounds like a banjo and toy piano. The three other two-minute treasures follow suit. Three pace-altering sweet tunes divide another 11 minutes.Brilliant enough. That leaves 14 minutes and they're the kickers: "Socs Hip" and "Leo Ryan (Our Pharoah's Slave)," seven minutes each, are mini-epics of mind-bending construction, chock-full of melodies and ideas that leader Kurt Heasley could have divvied among ten or 12 other songs. Stop-time tango movements, sitars, strings, a horn - anything could appear at any moment, and does. Like those ubiquitous Elephant Six folks, or like recent His Name Is Alive, the Lilys find grin-producing riffs and fragments from the past and recombine and rearrange them into thrilling new equations.
STEVE KLINGE

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