Chin Up Chin Up – This Harness Can’t Ride Anything (Suicide Squeeze)

The notoriously difficult sophomore album is made even more difficult when your band has released a worthy debut, which Chicago’s Chin Up Chin Up did with We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers (mp3), an album rendered even more impressive concerning the heartbreaking events they endured to finish it.

Tragedies can inspire, but there’s little evidence that the tragedy surrounding their debut have lit a creative fire on their follow-up. This Harness Can’t Ride Anything manages to replicate the same formula of the debut with a shade more proficiency and accessibility. Which is strange, given the circumstances, as this kind of guitar interplay should be the perfect field for a band that needs to exercise some personal demons.

There are hints that this request could be achieved: the title track (mp3) starts with a quirky, staccato guitar before transitioning into a larger-than-life surge of chords. By the 2:21 mark, the strings appear and you’re thinking that all of the expectations planted from We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers are coming true.

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