Cymbals Eat Guitars: Lenses Alien

Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
With its second album, Lenses Alien, Cymbals Eat Guitars challenges The Hold Steady’s stronghold on chronicling the debauched exploits of bored kids. But where Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn recalls Charles Bukowski in his unfussy tales of the characters he’s encountered, Cymbals frontman Joseph D’Agostino is more like a beat poet, peppering his stream-of-consciousness lyrics with references to urban legends (“It is initiation season, so watch out for cars with no lights on”), scrambling “to the dunes to puke under the pale moon,” getting “so high we’d pass out with our shoes on,” and friends gone too soon. (“I said ‘From the age of 6 this boy did not want to live,’” goes “Gary Condit.”)