Bryan Deister - Spines of the Heart (Self-Released)

Redondo Beach, CA’s Bryan Deister is a classically-trained musician well-versed in genres like jazz and the blues, which accounts for why although his clearest influences sonically might be My Bloody Valentine or Nirvana, stylistically there’s something far more experimental going on. His new album, Spines of the Heart, is a skewed rock record that indirectly demands your attention because of everything that is going on. The album sounds as if it’s a part of some parallel universe in which Kevin Shields listened to Miles Davis instead of The Jesus and Mary Chain for his jumping off point.

Although songs like “Have You” seem more like fragments, and others like “Silent Screams” are certainly left of center interpretations of pop music, it’s hard to consider this an “outsider” work, because Deister clearly knows his stuff. Its sizable length, however, does make it feel like something akin to an early Daniel Johnston tape. Deister adeptly mixes beautiful moments (“Today,” “Nothing More”) with the downright odd (“Seven Eight”), turning the album into a captivating experiment in bipolarity. Spines of the Heart was released digitally late last year, and will be available physically sometime in the not so distant future.