As anyone who’s lived there can tell you, the Midwest can be an unforgiving place. The winters are freezing, the summers are humid and it’s easy to feel landlocked by the vastness of earth in every direction. Chicago’s Chin Up Chin Up have successfully embodied that feeling with their second full-length, This Harness Can’t Ride Anything; yet as bleak as things may appear, there’s a pervasive feeling of hope inherent in the band’s brand of avant pop which stretches further than the Windy City’s skyline.
 
Chin Up Chin Up (think optimism and perseverance, not exercise) formed in 2001, with the guitars of Jeremy Bolen and Nathan Snydacker. Percussionist Chris Dye, bassist Chris Saathoff and keyboardist Greg Sharp joined shortly thereafter.   Chin Up Chin Up’s memorable introduction was 2004’s critically acclaimed We Should Have Never Lived Like Skyscrapers. Tragically, original bassist Saathoff was struck by a car and killed before the album was finished, so the band pieced together his bass parts from demos to complete the album. In due time, Chin Up Chin Up decided to regroup and move forward, asking Narrator frontman Jesse Woghin to take over on bass.

With the loss behind them, This Harness Can’t Ride Anything is a transitional record both metaphorically and literally: the lyrics are less obtuse, the arrangements more inventive and it feels more realized than the band’s debut. This record takes its cues from Skyscrapers, but ups-the-ante considerably, weaving hyper-literate song craft with a new sense of melody and wit.
 
Recorded by Brian Deck (Modest Mouse) at his Engine Studios, the tracks are a joyful mix of shifting dynamics, stuttering riffs, and buoyant arrangements all held together by Bolen’s scratched up discourse on breasts, beavers and Minnesota.  

The band possesses a palpable energy. Guitars trade melodies as conversations on “Water Planes In Snow” and if the vocal melody of “Mansioned” isn’t stuck in your head instantly, well, you’re not listening hard enough.   The record kicks off with a loving homage to Minnesota, as Bolen croons on about dry humping the abyss. “This Harness Can’t Ride Anything” thus sets the tone for the record; a distinct and singular vision of adulthood, Chin Up Chin Up are all post-pubescent heartache and broken barstools.  The album searches for beauty in places where no beauty exist and as the album closes with “Trophies For Hire”, you can literally feel the mileage of looking for too much, in a land where there is too little.

Ultimately, despite the adversity the band have endured in the past few years, This Harness Can’t Ride Anything is a document of where the band are right now, for better and worse. Listening to the disc, it seems inevitable that bigger things are soon in store for Chin Up Chin Up.  We think that you will agree.