It's no secret that buffaBLOG has a soft spot for Steak and Cake records. S&C Founder Brandon Schlia is often busy pumping out excellent Buffalo-centric releases, including songs from his own personal band, The Malones. But Schlia is also the man behind The New York Breakfast (or NYBRKFST), a decidedly more experimental take on indie pop than the straightforward Strokes-rock of The Malones.
Before I say anything else, NYBRKFST's new album, M.M.C., falls into a very specific category of record - it's a break up record. Everyone has their own record that soothes that raw part of your heart. Whether it's Deja Entendu or Transatlanticism or some other outlier album that just happened to enter your life at the right place at the right time, the fact of the matter is, we've all been there; rejected by the ones we love. With M.M.C., Schlia articulates it in such a way that you can't help but feel as though you were the third person in the relationship. He tackles the uncomfortable period of moving on - seeing that person with someone else, the regret of things that could have been, all of it. It's well thought out and articulate - it sounds a little bit like a spacier, more electronic version of his labelmate (or signee, depending on how you look at it), Anthony Delplato.
"Tuesday" kicks off the album with some quasi-ambient indie rock. There is this "thing" about NYBRKFST that I can't quite put my finger on... Schlia's music falls somewhere in between electronic and organic musicianship. A comparison to MGMT ("July 24") or The Postal Service ("BBQ") might be accurate for fleeting moments, but they are still not quite right... And even though there are hints of The Malones scattered throughout these songs (see the end of "M.M.C."), it's not garage-rocky enough to warrant a "sounds-like" tag. Schlia is a man of many talents - in this case, he seems to have been able to blend all of them into a perfect concoction of influences.
Songs like "Sweetie" start out with a unique riff and blissfully drift off into Schlia gold. But the song that really got to me was the 6:33 title track, "M.M.C." After some noisy ambiance in the beginning, Schlia hits hard. "In Allentown you laid a chain link fence of rumors down and they traveled directly to me. I was sitting in one of two white chairs on the Old Pink patio, not wanting to know anything or whose arm you're hanging on now..." Meanwhile, the music plays out like a modern, more straightforward version of The Gloria Record. The song itself kind of meanders through a loose structure, but in the long run, that ends up adding to the overall feeling and meaning of this album. It's that feeling of not wanting to know anything or wanting to commit to anything. The feeling of knowing there is news you don't want to hear, and that nevertheless, one of your loud mouth friends is going to end up blabbing it to you anyways. Maybe I'm putting words in Schlia's mouth, but that's what I took away from M.M.C.
As if he wasn't already firmly cemented in the foundation of Buffalo's music scene, NYBRKFST is that little extra push that truly validates Schlia as a Buffalo renaissance man. Luckily for us, when he stretches his singer-songwriter wings, it fits in seamlessly with the rest of his Steak & Cake peers.
