Dealer (Foxing) By Susan McLean

Hopefully, as faithful Bruised Knuckles readers (**aggressively winks in your direction**), you know that I love Foxing. As soon as I fell in love with their first album, The Albatross, and saw them live, I was not-so-patiently awaiting more. Foxing released The Magdalene as a first single, and I knew then that the second album was going to be incredible. Available for streaming now, and for purchase on 10/30, this is an album you need to listen to.

Foxing's sophomore album is just as emotional as the former, but quieter, cleaner, more concise. If the first was a tsunami of emotion, this is more a monsoon, building steadily until you don't even notice you're about to drown in the floodwater, then when the album is suddenly over, you realized Foxing created real emotions with just a series of sounds, and that blows your mind. Or maybe that's just me. 

​Brooklyn Vegan says: 

"If it doesn't seem that way at first, it's because rather than making their sound even bigger and risk falling into cheap bombast, Foxing have actually scaled back. There's nothing as immediate as "Rory," but over time the whole record will hit you much harder. It hit me on something like my seventh listen, on headphones in the subway. It was at some point during the one-two punch of "Indica" into "Winding Cloth" -- I completely forgot about my surroundings and just lost it in my head to these songs. It's the kind of thing only a truly powerful song can make you do, and eventually I realized that every song on this album is that kind of song. That's a very personal and uncritical way of looking at it, but these are songs that are meant to be appreciated on a deeply personal level.
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It's an album that embraces weeping piano ballads and orchestral indie rock as much as climactic post rock or glitchy downtempo. Sometimes a few of those things appear on one song, like "Night Channels" which manages to tackle The Antlers' intimacy and Explosions in the Sky's soaring breadth in just over four minutes. It's a rich-sounding record too, where even the distorted guitars sound clean. But it's not clean in a sunny, spring-y way. It constantly feels weighed down by sorrow, the kind of thing you reach for in late fall or the dead of winter. In the lyrics there's allusion to religion and war, vivid imagery ("soaking blood through a dogwood lung"), and often an overwhelming feeling of guilt. Singer Conor Murphy has a great voice with a noticeably wide range, but the power of this album is often in what he doesn't say, too. One of the songs that I said helped push this over the edge for me, "Winding Cloth," is an instrumental."

Give Dealer a listen. Indica, Night Channels, Winding Cloth, The Magdalene, ​Glass Coughs, and Coda are my favorites, but the album as a whole is a piece of art. 
 
Also catch them on tour with TWIABP, Brightside, and TTNG:
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Foxing -- 2015 Tour Dates
11/02 - Tallahassee, FL - Club Downunder *
11/04 - Newport, KY - The Southgate House Revival^
11/05 - Columbus, OH - The Basement^
11/06 - Grand Rapids, MI - The Pyramid Scheme^
11/07 - Chicago, IL - Subterranean^
11/08 - Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry^
11/10 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater^
11/11 - Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court^
11/12 - Reno, NV - The Holland Project^
11/13 - Portland, OR - Analog Theater^
11/14 - Vancouver, BC - Biltmore Cabaret^
11/15 - Seattle, WA - The Vera Project^
11/17 - San Francisco, CA - Rickshaw Shop^
11/18 - Los Angeles, CA - Roxy Theatre^
11/20 - Phoenix, AZ - The Rebel Lounge^
11/21 - El Paso, TX - Mesa Music Hall^
11/23 - Dallas, TX - Gas Monkey Bar N Grill^
11/24 - Austin, TX - Sidewinder^
11/25 - Houston, TX - Walters^
11/27 - Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade^
11/28 - Nashville, TN - The End^
11/30 - Richmond, VA - The Camel^
12/01 - Morgantown, WV - 123 Pleasant St^
12/02 - Baltimore, MD - Ottobar^
12/03 - Brooklyn, NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg^
12/04 - Philadelphia, PA - Union Transfer^
12/05 - Ithaca, NY - The Haunt *
12/06 - Boston, MA - The Sinclair *
12/12 - St. Louis, MO @ The Firebird (Album Release Show)
* - w/ TWIABP, Brightside
^ - w/ TWIABP, TTNG, Brightside

Note: album art, quote, and tour dates from Brooklyn Vegan, no copyright infringement intended