Terribly Empty Pockets

Terribly Empty Pockets

Get Wet

Anyway

For more than a year, Terribly Empty Pockets have yelped and twitched through set after set of crunchy pop all across Columbus, Ohio. Consistently holding their own in any dive, they stand shoulder to shoulder with the city’s best art-punk outfits (Times New Viking, Necropolis, Tree of Snakes, El Jesus De Magico). The band’s debut EP, Get Wet, comes across with all the nervous energy of their live set, but in the studio they’ve refined their style, crafting a weird wall of sound from delicate instrumentation and a seemingly inexhaustible string of sparkly melody lines. Apparently, if the Terribly Empty Pockets can get sound out of an object, they’ll immediately create a melody with it. Recorded at Columbus Discount HQ and mixed by Nashville studio pro Jason Lehning, Get Wet is a confident statement of purpose backed by a powerful batch of tunes. “Brother,” for example, sounds like Swell Maps-gone-Sonny-&-Cher, sweet and alluring, but with the type of complex harmonic arrangement that only new wave / funk crossovers ever seem to achieve. To describe the group’s sound, name-drop a motley crew of new wave’s best and brightest — The Eurythmics, The Talking Heads, Bow Wow Wow, The Smiths, Nick Lowe, The Wedding Present, The Bats — and you won’t be far off the mark. Get Wet is a mesmerizing listen, to say the least — a left-field live band that never fails to impress and invigorate even the most cauliflowered of ears has executed their craft in the studio.