Take one listen to Eisley, and you're likely to have one of the following reactions:

"Wow, these are some of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard!"

"Wow, these kiddos sure like Sixpence None the Richer a lot, don't they?"

Actually, I think my reaction was both. I've been hearing a lot of media buzz, and word-of-mouth buzz, about Eisley, and who could blame anyone? They've got just the right ingredients - They're a girl-fronted rock band, the group is largely comprised of siblings, they're a Christian band who has managed to score an opening spot for Coldplay before even getting a full album out, and the band started when its youngest member was eight years old. Shoot, who needs good music when you've got a story like that?

Well, Eisley needs good music. Thankfully, they have it. Oh boy, do they have it. As a matter of fact, I may have found myself an early contender for Best New Artist of 2005, because it's only taken a few spins of their full-length debut Room Noises for me to fall in love. The heavenly mix of multiple girlish voices, fanciful lyrics that clearly came from active imaginations, occasional rocking intensity that balances well with strong pop sensibilities, and a certain X-factor that I just can't explain, have taken me captive, and there's no telling when they'll let me go. Eisley came along and whispered in my ear, "We know you loved that obscure band Chasing Furies and were heartbroken that they only put one album out. We know you're still reeling from the breakup of Sixpence None the Richer. It's OK. Eisley will comfort you. Eisley will be all that you need from music, and more." Of course, that's an exaggeration, but you know, Eisley is just one of those bands that tempts me to exaggerate. (This is gonna be one of those review where I try to restrain myself from overzealous fan boy gushing. I just know it.)

So am I really in love, or is this just a rebound fling? That's the question I ask myself as I replay Room Noises over and over, waiting for the disc to wear out its welcome. Is it OK for this group to basically be offering us a long-lost Sixpence album? I mean, I miss Sixpence and it's nice to have another band to fill their shoes, but is that really a fair comparison? Sixpence had one girl, not three, and while Leigh Nash's lilting voice occasionally led the band into sublime, lush moments of heavenly pop music, Eisley seems to live in a universe that Sixpence only visited from time to time. That's where the more haunting side comes in, but that's mostly in the melodies, because Eisley's lyrics are generally happier than Sixpence's (mainstream radio singles notwithstanding). They're also more enigmatic - I don't think I could have told you at first glance what a single one of these songs was really about (well, maybe one of them), and I kind of like that about Eisley. Their mix of extremely accessible music that still strikes a deeper chord, instead of being throwaway pop music, couples well with their dreamscape lyrics. It's a hook that sinks in and stays there, and that remains extremely satisfying under scrutiny.

So I guess I really am in love. You could say that Eisley is my happy equivalent of Evanescence - heck, they might even be a little more believable, and certainly less obnoxious. But alas, they are still a girl-fronted rock band, which according to the pattern so far of girl-fronted rock bands either breaking up or starting to really suck after an album or two, means that they're doomed. Doomed. DOOMED! So let's enjoy them while we can before the inevitable curse kicks in, 'K?

Memories
Dreary birds parade across the dreary sky
But down below, the woman absent-mindedly begins to sow
How she sows the seeds her husband loved so much
But he's no longer here with us...
One thing's for sure, Eisley knows how to draw us in. Beginning with the urgent vocals of Sherri DuPree, the band weaves an eerie story in 3/4 time, telling us about a woman whose late husband is somehow communicating with her through flowers planted in her garden. Definitely a strange topic to start with - it places us in an alternate world where symbolism seems to matter more than the likelihood of actual events. Whatever the purpose for this story, the band knocks it out of the park early on, with the song building in intensity from its lovely chorus about "Beautiful things that spring from these rows, with musical names and musical sounds", to a climactic bridge which amps up sister Chauntelle's guitars and brother Weston's drums a little more and which finds Sherri and the bands keyboardist, her sister Stacy trading off vocals, one an octave above the other. "Haunting" seems like a cliche word for me to use at this point, but you know, if the glass slipper fits...

Telescope Eyes
Please don't make me cry
I'm just like you, I know you know
I'm just like you, so leave me alone...
This song was honestly a disappointing choice to release as the album's first single. It's not a bad song at all - it's just that it's much more straightforward in terms of its rhythm and melody, with its moody, subdued guitar line running throughout and the piano driving the verses. It's probably the easiest song to link to Coldplay because of that. The song is actually about feeling alienated by people who look at you funny, as if being younger, or being a celebrity, or whatever, gives them a legitimate reason to point and stare. And the song has a very dejected tone to it, with the conclusion pretty much being that protagonist just wants you to leave her be. I love Stacy's harmonies on this one, and that's probably the biggest thing that elevates the song above the ordinary for me. But I think it'll give people the wrong impression of who Eisley is, making them seem like just another jaded and subdued modern rock act. It would have served better as a second or third single, after hitting listeners over the head with something a little more fresh and immediately noticeable, so if Eisley doesn't get the response that their label is hoping they'll get, I think we'll know where the blame lies.

I Wasn't Prepared
When the morning came
The bees flew down and wrapped themselves around me
And that's when I spoke the word
To have them trace your face for me in pollen...
This song has one of those melodies that actually kind of annoyed me at first. It's something about the way that Sherri's voice sways back and forth during the chorus, making the song into a bit of a tipsy dance. I said the same thing about Sixpence's "Dizzy" when I first heard it, and now that's one of my favorite songs of theirs. The same charm worked for Eisley, with the song starting to captivate me on the third or fourth listen, drawing me in with its melancholy musing about an unspecified tragedy which seems to have been brought about by wandering off into the forest and getting surrounded by a swarm of bees. Is it just me, or is anyone else thinking My Girl? Yeah, creepy. But oh, what a delicious song this is. Just listen to the slow, brooding pianos and the wistful echoes of "Oh, come back to me my darling" in the bridge, and try to remain unaffected.

Golly Sandra
Well, I guess I have should have been around to sing you to sleep
You look so beautiful, it hurts me slightly...
A definite change of pace happens here, with a much brighter drumbeat and an extremely poppy melody accompanying an insistently sunny lap steel hook. If you think that it sounds "country", well I guess you're sort of right, but there's also a bit of a Beach Boys atmosphere to it, as if this song could have popped up in a teen flick about forty years ago. You'd expect this to be a love song, perhaps Eisley's version of a "Kiss Me", but instead it appears to be a song of friendship directed at a girl who has perhaps made some poor choices in life. Sherri can't help but hold herself responsible for some of that, wondering what would have been different if she had tried to love this person a little better. Again ,we get some excellent echoing and harmonizing by Stacy, which is always a plus, and I like the quirky stuttering of "G-g-g-golly Sandra" at the beginning of the verse. One semi-major drawback is the chorus, which if you're just reading the word, looks kind of lame: "Oh, you are my scar, and that's not really far, heeeeyyy, heeeeyyy." It doesn't really say much and that leaves the song incomplete, but it sure sounds good. Eisley does occasionally have a habit of starting with an interesting lyric and then not quite following through with a strong chorus.

Marvelous Things
Dark night, hold tight
And sleep tight, my baby
Morning light shall burst bright
And keep us here safely...
I always seem to be drawn to the songs that maintain an uneasy balance between the dark and the light, and I think this is Eisley's proudest entry in that category. I believe Stacy takes the lead on this one, and oh, what a mesmerizing vocal she lays down here! She manages to intersperse the verses, which are like words ripped from a surreal fantasy novel, with a spine-tingling "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" that descends and ascends again in triplets, along with Weston's robust drum pattern in 3/4 time. It's such a strong and distinctive hook that I'm considering snagging the tune for a cell phone ringtone. One isn't sure whether the fantasy is meant to be a dream, or a nightmare to be saved from, but either way it's one of the most beautiful songs of 2005 so far, giving us a bright and reassuring chorus, and an extra helping of Stacy's cascading vocal chant for an exquisite, tense outro.

Brightly Wound
We were walking there, I had tangles in my hair
But you make me feel so pretty
You have shinning eyes, yes, like those forest lights
And it makes me want to cry...
The sound of the piano that dominates this easy-going song makes it feel like a bit of a music-box. This is definitely one for the movie soundtracks - picture two happy-go-lucky youngsters in love, innocently wandering off into the woods (the forest seems to be a recurring theme for Eisley), vowing never grow old and jaded and lose their fanciful fondness for each other. The level of escapism here can be almost alarming, as the girls sing "I shall never grow up, make-believe is much too fun." Considering that this was probably written by someone who was either under 18 at the time, or not far beyond that age, this isn't surprising or overly bothersome, but I can see some listeners scoffing at such a line. By the same token, it'll appeal to people like me who have this intense sort of longing for the innocence of childhood to return, even if we know it doesn't quite work that way. Regardless of whether that bugs you, forget about it for a second and thrill to the sound of this song's second verse, in which Sherri and Stacy are simultaneously singing completely different lyrics with their own unique melodies. Both voices intertwine in a lovely manner, creating a powerful union that makes the song feel even more dreamlike than it already is.

Lost at Sea
The mystery of salt and sea, oh
Has never been intriguing, oh
And to me, but the sea
Green is set so beautifully...
This is another song that starts immediately with vocals, but it's a lot less assuming than "Memories", using a gently floating (pun intended) piano melody as the backbone for pretty much the entire thing, with only light drums and some bell-like keyboards joining in from time to time. The slightly syncopated rhythm and Sherri's sweet "oh-hoh-oh"s during the verses add to the feeling of detachment, and we start to realize that the castaway being described her doesn't necessarily mind her predicament of aimlessly bobbing about in the ocean. Again, there's a feeling of being almost stupidly happy here, which can be off-putting, but if I think about it in comparison to songs like Iona's "Beyond These Shores" that also talk about drifting out into the unknown as a metaphor for knowing God more deeply, the sense of joyfulness in the face of being lost starts to make a little more sense. Still, there are points where the detachment bugs me on a musical level, since this song never seems to rise or fall in tone or intensity. It's lovely, but it just kind of hangs there, so I guess it's not one of my favorites on the disc.

My Lovely
My heart was caught in a landslide
And now it feels for you only, for you only....
I get the feeling that Eisley probably doesn't have a prayer of making it onto Christian radio, but if they did, this would probably be the song they'd do it with. While it's one of those songs that is ambiguous enough that it could be about anyone, the more straightforward rock presentation, surprisingly simplistic lyrics ("I'm lost and alone without you here in my arms") and the emphasis on a clean, pretty chorus melody make it seem like the sort of thing Christian radio would swallow more easily. The verse melody is a tad quirkier, but not too much. Not saying it's a bad song (we've got some more thrilling "oooh"s and "aaah"s in the energetic bridge, and that sort of thing will always do me in), but it does feel like one of those things that came about as a result of a not-yet-complete idea because an album needed to be finished on time. (As a side note, what's with all these songs that have "My" and an adjective in the title? "My Glorious". "My Precious". "My Heavenly". "My Immortal". I guess it's a literary thing, leaving out the noun that the adjective is supposed to modify, but I'm always tempted to get all "Grammar Police" on a band for it.)

Just Like We Do
The rain, it tumbled down through the cracks in the sky
Which made your hands grow, watch your hands grow
And we still see through their plainshifted laughs
We'll hold the hands of sinners, and then we will pass...
Eisley gives the next song more of a folk bent, with Chauntelle masterfully picking at an acoustic guitar, which gives the song a fluid momentum not unlike Sixpence's "Tension Is a Passing Note", minus the strings. (I hate to keep comparing to specific Sixpence songs, but it's honestly the first thing that comes to mind.) Sherri's singing is more slow and measured here, allowing her and Stacy to kind of draw out their notes and milk their melody for all it's worth. It's a testament to the band's compositional skills that this song can have a relatively simple and repetitive chord structure, and such basic instrumentation, and yet still sound so lovely. Moments like these actually remind me of a much more obscure Christian band called Rivulets & Violets (I'm probably one of about eleven people in the world who actually has their CD).

Plenty of Paper
Something's growing under that wing, I think a face is dawning
Oh no, the books are growing faces
And you're lost quite classically with your nose in a book
And it seems so fitting...
Now this is an interesting change-up - Eisley takes us briefly out of fantasy and into either sci-fi, or some sort of a surreal Tim Burton film (the comparison has been made a few times already, so no, I didn't come up with that one on my own) with its weird, jaunty, spacey keyboards at the beginning. If music could poke fun at its listener, it's definitely doing so here by catching us off-guard after such a gentle and lovely number as the last one. I'm not sure whether the DuPrees have been reading Lewis Carroll, Madeleine L'Engle, or Dr. Seuss, but the language here is probably some of the most densely imaginative on the record. I mean, how many songwriters sing about cutting the moon in half and putting a piece in their hair and other nonsense like that, and actually make it sound compelling? It could mean a myriad of different things - it's either a celebration of imagination, or a warning not to let yourself get too carried away with all the things you can invent on blank paper. I'm not sure which, because this is one of those songs that could take me years to unravel. Aside from that, it's a wonderfully whimsical upbeat moment that keeps the album from getting too uniformly mellow near the end.

One Day I Slowly Floated Away
You've got a lot of nerve coming here
Your eyes are beating rhythms way faster
Than the speeding bullet that took the life of your radio...
Another fine example of Eisley's lyricism at its best shows up here, in another song richly populated with music-box-like piano and a soaring, dreamlike chorus. This one seems to be about an old couple looking back on time spent together, and on a belief they had in their youth that they were invincible. That's what I read into it, anyway - it kind of provides a response to a song like "Brightly Wound". As they reminisce, they can see near-misses, and realize how they're lucky to still be alive. And yet the chorus, which speaks exuberantly of waking up to a beautiful morning, seems to indicate a longing to know what's on the other side of the death that still awaits them. I don't know; it could probably be interpreted a million different ways, but to me, that's the beauty of poetic songwriting, that it gives each listener a different picture in their minds' eye, and yet words and phrases that are unique to the songwriter are still being used.

Trolley Wood
Out one day, walking one day
Out one day with you, hallelujah
We found a wood with trolleys on wheels
Rolling all around the hills, hallelujah...
The last "official" track on the album seems to be comprised of little more than finger snaps, handclaps, Stacy playing what sounds like a Fender Rhodes, and maybe a tambourine or some other light percussion. It's a very happy-go-lucky song, and not surprisingly, it's about finding a secret place in the woods. (Seriously, if these kids make any substantial amount of money off of this album, they're bound to buy a really nice cabin out in the middle of nowhere and disappear, never to be seen or heard from again!) Apparently these woods have trolleys, and apparently it's a very spiritual place for them to be, judging from the "hallelujah"s interspersed throughout the song. And apparently it's a difficult place to find, because they even lose their way sometimes when trying to return to it. Hey, I don't write 'em, I just analyze 'em. It's kind of an offbeat way to end the album, and like "Lost at Sea" it can start to feel like the music isn't really going anywhere, but it's got a childlike character to it that I can still appreciate. Of course, it's required by law that any song with handclaps must end with the hand-clappers degenerating into scattered applause for themselves. I'd think that was cute if I hadn't already heard it so many times.

Lost at Sea (Remix)
Allow me to be the dissenting voice on this one. I like this remix. Yeah, it's weird to hear electronic keyboards and beats trickling throughout this song, but you know what? It gives it a much-needed percussive backbone that it didn't have before. Sure, it's a weird fit for the album, but no more than "Trolley Wood" or "Plenty of Paper". Place this at track 7 instead of the original, and I think the album would flow just fine (it already does, but it would even more so with this version there). Anyway, maybe the group just did this for fun, but I think the electronic augmentation gives the song a little more oomph, and the basic instrumentation and vocals are left intact, so it's not jarring to those who were already used to the original. I'd actually be interested to hear Eisley experimenting with a little bit of electronic influence in the future - they certainly have the potential with a keyboardist in the band. I mean, hey, it would help set them apart from Sixpence a little more.

Maybe it sounds like I've had a lot of criticisms for someone who thought he was going to spend the entire review gushing. Honestly, everything I've pointed out is a insignificant nitpick, compared to the overall realization that Eisley makes beautiful and intelligent music. Think of it this way - if you met a really attractive girl - I'm not talking a supermodel, but more the type who had a certain aura, a natural, exotic sort of beauty to her, and you talked to her and found out that she was very smart and wonderfully imaginative, would you lose interest in her just because she sometimes had trouble fully articulating her many thoughts? Well, I wouldn't. I probably wouldn't even give it a second thought.

That girl is Eisley. And you'd better fall in love with her while you still have the chance, or otherwise she'll be doomed. Doomed. DOOMED!

ALBUM WORTH:
Memories $2
Telescope Eyes $1
I Wasn't Prepared $1.50
Golly Sandra $1.50
Marvelous Things $2
Brightly Wound $1.50
Lost at Sea $.50
My Lovely $.50
Just Like We Do $1.50
Plenty of Paper $1.50
One Day I Slowly Floated Away $1.50
Trolley Wood $.50
Lost at Sea (Remix) $1
TOTAL: $16.50

Band Members:
Sherri DuPree: Lead vocals, guitars
Stacy DuPree: Keyboards, vocals
Chauntelle DuPree: Guitars
Weston DuPree: Drums
John Wilson: Bass

Website: http://www.eisley.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Romancing