Led by vocalists and guitarists Michael Santana and Adam Schubert, the Chicago bands album captures the unpredictable thrill of its energetic live show without sacrificing thoughtful songwriting and purposeful composition. Improvisational guitar explorations and textural compositions from Santana, Schubert and fellow guitarist Andrew Harper fit gear-like with the steady-handed rhythm section of bassist Rob McWilliams and drummer Elise Poirier. The band is ever charging forward, building hypnotic momentum through slyly mutating repetition and dense complexity. You can imagine Cafe Racers’ guitar reverberations escaping its practice space, bouncing off the monolithic brick ComEd building on Western Avenue a couple miles away, rattling through the alleys and gangways, shaking gutters loose from two-flats, stirring eddies of sound down the sidewalks. It’s urgent music that calls for the listener’s attention even as it lifts toward mind-out-of-body introspection, encouraged by lyrics that explore our past selves calling out to the present. What remains and what’s left behind, what answers exist in conversation between our silhouette and our physical form?
