To Realize

Although they try to be standoffish and badass, Clipt Beaks are just a bunch of dragged kids dealing with rejected loves and wavering self-esteem. Just like the rest of us.

Their second full-length, To Realize, sounds just as acid-damaged as their debut, incorporating the same batch of brittle guitars, totemic drums, and big washes of indecipherable haze. But when the lyrics poke their head above the murk, they're not waxing on political injustice or surrealist nonsense like their heroes the Pop Group and Liars, in fact they come off as emo -- despondently infatuated with a girl whose never ever going to reciprocate. Lead singer Nick Barbeln even lets loose a few treble-mulching, genuine howls. He's in pain and he wants you to know it, but it holds together well for an hour-long record.

• Album title: To Realize (2010)
• Artist: Clipd Beaks
• Label: Lovepump
• Songs: (1) Strangler (2) Blood (3) Broke Life (4) Visions (5) Home (6) Atoms (7) Dust (8) Desert Highway Music (9) Jamn (10) On One (11) Shot on a Horse