Nicole Atkins - Neptune City Video

Send "Neptune City" ringtone to your cell

"Neptune City" Video Review

Nicole Atkins, a native of coastal Neptune, New Jersey, and her band, aptly named "the Sea," distinguish themselves from the anti-folk scene in much the way Atkins' favorite director, David Lynch, distinguishes himself in film: Employing dark imagery to illuminate beauty. The band's debut six-song EP, Bleeding Diamonds, is just a snack-size version of the upcoming full-length due out early next year. Atkins' haunting voice echoes themes of destruction, loss, and longing, but she decidedly places a single star in the foreboding black sky, creating just enough light to guide you through.

Although Atkins doesn't consider herself a political artist, the title track was conceived after watching news footage of bombs exploding in the night skies of Iraq. Dancing between delicate Radiohead-channeling riffs and grandiose instrumental explosions, Atkins sings, "The sky looks like its bleeding diamonds / Smoke looks just like a thousand garlands," creating a graceful verbal pirouette through the war zone. "Carouselle" mourns the recent destruction of Asbury Park's Palace amusement park, a historical landmark and staple of the Jersey shoreline for over a century. The jaunty piano inspires a visual of old silent films, with black-and-white scenes of a wrecking ball meeting an old building in a pile of dust.

KRISTINA ENSMINGER

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