Was Capsula’s “Songs & Circuits” The Great Lost Album of the Aughts?
Tulip Frenzy’s incredibly hip and extensive readership may have grokked Capsula’s penultimate album Songs & Circuits when it came out in 2008. It may have made 10 Best lists that year, and the world’s bright young rock crits may have added it to the fin de siecle roundups that were popular in the last few months of the last year of the last decade, er, five months ago. But damn, we missed the phenom entire. And of course when we were finally on the case, we naturally first snagged their latest, the incredibly fine Rising Mountains. Yet boss as that ‘un is, it is an underachiever when compared to its taller, stronger, faster old sib. Our whole world view under assault, and striving not to overcompensate and call Song & Circuits, like, the best punk album since Elastica, the only thing we can think to say is, Song & Circuits is, like, the best punk album since The Clash.
Seriously. This album is Desert Island good. It is Rocket To Russia good. Not quite Exile On Main Street good, in part because only time will make that case, partly because declaring it so interferes with one of Tulip Frenzy’s spring narratives, which is that the forthcoming re-release of the Stones’ classic is gonna trigger Jubilee Time, or the End of Days, or something suitably mega.
Back to Songs & Circuits. If this space has not yet prompted you to sidle over to the iTunes bar to check out Capsula — the real Capsula, not the dopey Israeli electronica outfit that are currently clogging the Amazon listings, but the genuine Buenos Aires-bred, Bilbao habitating trio with their Sonic Youth Meets Brendan Benson dynamic — then may we politely urge you to GET OFF THE DIME AND CHECK THESE GUYS OUT. And the place to start, actually, is Songs & Circuits. Only after you become acclimated to their immense greatness should you turn to last year’s Rising Mountains.
We had thought our life was reasonably complete without even knowing Capsula was out there. Now we realize life can never be complete until this band gets HUGE. Do your part.
Tulip Frenzy 
August 29, 2013 at 1:28 pm
[…] We hadn’t been paying close enough attention to the happenings one of our favorite bands, Capsula, to have gotten the word that Tony Visconti was producing their new album, Solar Secrets, which came out earlier this week. What a great pairing! Visconti, of course, is the producer of several of Bowie’s best albums, including this year’s The Next Day, and Capsula are such Bowie fans, last year they put out a note-perfect replica of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Now, unfortunately, we viewed that homage to Bowie as something of a misstep, an unfortunate career detour, but happily, with the excellent Solar Secrets, they are back on the strong form exhibited in 2011′s In The Land Of The Silver Souls, which we ranked as the #4 best album of the year, and which caused us to ask whether Capsula is the greatest rock’n'roll band in the world. Based on Solar Secrets, they are still in contention for such an honor, even if it is not as spectacular as 2006′s Songs & Circuits, which we consider perhaps the finest punk rock album of the Aughts. […]
May 28, 2016 at 3:26 pm
[…] what still remains one of the 21st Century’s single greatest platters of tuneful punk rock, Song And Circuits. Five English-language albums later — one of them live, another a note-for-note rendition […]