Sean Kirkpatrick – Vocals, Keyboards/Piano
Ian Hamilton – Keyboards
Robert Anderson – Drums

Fake Infinity (out 2-21-12)

With their amplified synth-rock and creeped-out, cryptic vocal hooks, Nervous Curtains’ new record takes you into a world of Fake Infinity where everything you think you know is wrong. The canvas here is filled out by black space organ and pulverized synthesizers. The grand piano that dominated the Dallas, TX-based trio’s 2010 debut, Out of Sync with Time, is used sparingly, lending these songs an aura of impenetrability. Sean Kirkpatrick, formerly of The Paper Chase, has written a record that wakes you up and shakes you out of the usual stupor.

Taking the dislocation and anxious agitation of 70s post-punkers such as Magazine or early Ultravox and injecting a jagged noise rock aesthetic and dynamic moodiness, Nervous Curtains avoids retro devotion while producing a memorable and authentic sonic experience. Kirkpatrick creates narrators whose pathologies and disorders put them at odds with the world around them on “Moody Photos,” “Wired to Make Waves” and “The Crooked Telepathic.” “Come Around Viral” subverts the usual feel-good aesthetic of spiritual connectedness with a darker undercurrent. Album centerpiece “It’s the End of Eternity” brings you into the post-apocalyptic world of your own adulthood. The song is a landscape where discarded metal bakes on the broken concrete foundations of abandoned buildings and carefree summers of youth have given way to oppressive heat waves. As naive optimism and idealism have been destroyed, the band seeks a new kind of beauty in the rubble.When the world is at its end, it is whatever you make it to be. Once you understand that we’re living in Fake Infinity, a new concept of personal success is born within the crumbling system. When the final track, “Letter of Resignation,” tells you to “kill your dreams before they kill you”—you’re grateful for the advice. Nervous Curtains promises you, this is no beach party.

1-sheet (Fake Infinity)

1-sheet (Out of Sync With Time)