ArpLine is a strange beast. While many of their peers in the Brooklyn music scene pay lip service to bands from the seventies referencing those artists which came before almost like a checklist, they seem content to ape whatever is around them. Each band chasing duplication of those original artists losing the details which make the originals great. Until, like a copy of a copy of a VHS tape, only the barest hint of what was originally there remains and you’re left little more than something that may move and vaguely sound like the original, but in actuality moves and sounds like an entire scene full of these faded stars seen through gauze, poorly constructed and bereft of details.

ArpLine is not like that.

The Kiss Off, however was. To call The Kiss Off a previous incarnation of ArpLine is both accurate and inaccurate. There were the same members playing the same instruments, but in addition to that they carried the baggage of the scene that they were a part of with them. Copies of copies playing generic NY Rock. “Like scarves and denim garage?” I asked. “No, like Interpol” Sam says.

All five members of ArpLine went to college for music (“What would you be doing if you didn’t have music?” “There is no back up plan.”) . Adam De Rosa (guitar), Michael Chap Resnick (drums), Oliver Edsforth (synth and alto sax) and Nathan Lithgow (bass) went to New York University, while Sam Tyndall (lead singer, synth, guitar) attended Bennington University (“What did you learn?” “How to get drunk as efficiently as possible”). The two groups were making music individually but though a mutual acquaintance met and connected, forming The Kiss Off, a name each member hated but no better alternative presented itself.

Listening to The Kiss Off’s Brace EP there is a lot of ArpLine in it. Sam’s amazing vocal delivery, the Ping-Pong bounce of the bass and keyboards as they alternate against each other and in concert to lay a firm sound floor beneath De Rosa’s guitar lines which rise from murk singling itself out. But you also hear Alex Kapranos in the vocals and you hear the occasional synth routine that sounds discarded from a She Wants Revenge song. Too many of the songs start with the same sounding bouncing keys as the rest of the instruments come in with new phrases and it’s ultimately every moody indie band from the past ten years. It’s eyeliner and self harm at 256 kbps.

Through this though is a glimpse of what ArpLine would be. The same moody vocals, the song “Amplify” in an earlier version sans arpeggios, the strong bass of Nathan Lithgow and the dark murky styling in songs like “Mother Murder” and “More News” and while it’s good, it never really reaches the epochal nature of ArpLine’s album Travel Book

“You’re Weak in the Knees”

Arpline’s Travel Book is their self-released album offered on a pay what you will basis through bandcamp.com. Ten tracks, four featuring production by Chris Coady, known for working with TV on the Radio, Beach House and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, while the rest of the album was engineered and recorded by the band themselves utilizing what they’d learned before they ran out of money to pay others. The tutelage they enjoyed showing no clear discordance with what they had done with Coady versus what they had done on their own.

Each song is well defined with no immediate indication of a change in the production. The tracks take full effect in the frequencies afforded by their instruments and the vocals while not clear are never drowned in the complexities of the song mixes.

Opening with the appropriately named “Speed (Rush Ah)” the simple chord progression works it was through the minute and a half capturing your attention as keyboards squeal and bounce against the melodies of the guitar and each instrument threatens to careen out of control, breaking from the whole before the tracks find their way back together and lead into the next song. “Fold Up Like a Piece of Paper” is the awkwardly named anthem on this record, where lower frequency synth lines and concurrent bass threaten to grind you beneath the gears of the song’s individual instrumental gears and Sam’s vocals soar into the sky with the complimentary secondary synth lines and Adam’s guitar work reminds you of anthems from previous decades while not aping any of them as his fingers fly along the neck before vanishing back into the background as the rest of the instruments grind along, and before you know it, you’ve been spit out and the next song similarly compels action on the part of its listeners. “Make it Rain” contains all of the elements that make the previous song successful building into a triumphant and singular style.

Before you think that ArpLine only moves at one speed, “Parts unknown” moves slower, and builds to the epic heights of the best songs of Krautrock and Progressive rock eras without the self indulgent noodling inherent in the latter. This slower song selection is found predominately in the latter half of the album, “Sound and Versions” and “Game” really shows the band’s love of Eno era Bowie while “Cap” showcases the many vocal moods of Sam as the tracks drag along at the speed of a dirge.

Yet there are more than just these two styles to ArpLine on this album. The best song on the album, “Weekend in the Colonies” showcases both styles, as the first half of the song is as amazing as anything that came before and the final minute is a near ambient refrain of chords that seems almost disconnected form what came before until it suddenly clicks and it acts as gateway to the final half of the album.

Then, the unthinkable happens. The album ends.

But what then? Where do you go from there?

ArpLine’s Travel Book is an album requiring almost repeated listens. If not to try and discern the purposefully hidden lyrics, but to try to recapture the dizzying heights to which the band propels you above any other Brooklyn Band currently playing. ArpLine is unique. While other bands mine the shallow music of the 1980s or (god help you) the worst aspects of the 1970s, ArpLine is trying to find a way forward leaving their peers in the dust, trying to gain an artistry that merely acknowledges the past while refusing to be a slave to it. That if for no other reason demands that you give ArpLine your attention.

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