This is a very beautiful thing. I wish I could just upload the whole CD for you to listen to and be done with this review so that I could get back to these songs. Alas...

I listen to a lot of CDs and get a lot of melodies temporarily stuck in my head. All too often they're of the "god I hate this song, I wish I'd stop humming it" variety. Not so with the songs on The Great Eastern. They've been in my head for weeks now, and I'm not even close to being tired of humming, singing, whistling my way across the city with them.

As is often the case with CDs I end up really liking, The Great Eastern took a little while to seep into my brain. The first few listens left me thinking, "well, that was pretty, but not all that memorable." But I kept listening to it again and again, and eventually realized that it was all I wanted to hear. There's such a big, lush, welcoming sound to these songs, the melodies are lovely, the girl/boy voices crush-inspiring.

Strong, clear, full, arrangements of about a gazillion different instruments account for the sonic richness that characterizes The Great Eastern. On tracks like "Thirteen Gliding Principles" the band moves easily from pretty, light guitar/voice sections to full on orchestral wails. And even on more stripped down numbers, like "The Past That Suits You Best," there's still an incredible level of sonic detail and embellishment.

It's not often that a band manages to put together an album that does a good job of combining full, orchestral arrangements, tweaky, detailed studio work and great song writing. The Great Eastern is such an album. Get it, listen to it, listen to it again and again. Keep going until you can't stop. You'll be glad you did.

(See Splendid's recent interview with Stewart Henderson from The Delgados here!)