2008, Exit Stencil Records

Spanish Prisoners‘ first album, Songs to Forget, starts and ends sparsely, but definitely not forgettably.

The album begins with a nice guitar and strange vocals, and ends with a kind of combination medieval folk and Live In Chicago-era Joan of Arc. On the second track, lead man Leonid Maymind sings that there’s “No solace from the sunrise,” amid synth drums and loud guitars. The album continues along that vein for a while, then relaxes a bit in the middle (the swelling instrumental “This is Not That”). After this point, Spanish Prisoners seem to really get their footing. The tracks that follow, “Mantequilla,” “Dear Just Curious,” and “How the Fallen Fell,”–especially with “Fallen”‘s Neil Young harmonica–are the album’s highlights.

B+