Best Of [LP]

Hamilton's Actor (fka Mister Rabbit) return with The Best Of, an album that trades the pastoral Americana of their previous releases for a set of crunchy, feedback-laden epics indebted to genre demarcations as varied as 1990s alternative rock, power pop, and contemporary alt-country. Earworm riffs delivered by careening guitars and impassioned, full-throated vocals hooks augment deceptively thorny arrangements and heartfelt lyricism; the album sounds like the band in a room, but glued together and rendered in glassy clarity by an expertly high-fidelity production. Though a sophomore album on paper, it feels like a group starting fresh, arriving reinvented but fully-formed with a stellar collection of material poised to propel them to greater heights. The album arrives September 25 via Having Fun / We Are Busy Bodies.The Best Of was recorded with producer Matt Snell and engineer Sean Pearson at Boxcar Sound. The band - made up of Jeff van Helvoort (guitar, vocals), Sean Smith (bass, vocals), Mitch Clark (guitar, vocals), and former member Ryan Mickeloff (drums) - set up in the studio's loft space as if playing a gig, it's tall ceilings and open concept allowing them to replicate their cavernous live sound with ease. Before hitting the studio, the band spent an extensive period honing their material through rehearsals and demos, arriving at the studio a well-oiled machine. Due to this, they tracked with minimal overdubs, preferring to be as truthful to the performances as possible. The mix reinforces this approach, augmenting their takes into something larger than life but still grounded in a gritty, off-the-floor feel.