The Vanishing Spies

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The music landscape is littered with the corpses of bands that just couldn’t pull together a fitting follow-up to a successful debut disc. Take The Strokes, for example. Sure, they rebounded with 2006’s First Impressions of Earth, but Room on Fire didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Likewise, when was the last time you felt inclined to put Elastica's The Menace on the hi-fi? Correct answer: Never. And whatever happened to that Christopher Cross guy from the early ‘80s? One minute it was "Arthur’s Theme," and the next he was selling Cinnamon Crispas at an Akron, Ohio Taco Bell.

These cautionary tales were not lost on The Vanishing Spies. After a debut album that met with critical praise and, oddly enough, radio success in Australia, Italy, and the former Czech republic, the two founding members of The Vanishing Spies, Sean McNamee and Eric Zuccola, took several years off to focus on solo and side projects. It is debatable whether they were using this time to explore other facets of their musical interests or they were simply avoiding the sophomore album slump by avoiding the sophomore album altogether, but in summer 2005, McNamee and Zuccola had a Big Idea that finally convinced them it was time to reconvene as The Vanishing Spies: They decided to make a concept album about the repercussions of America’s dependency on oil.

We know what you’re thinking: The only thing more potentially fatal to a band than making a bad second disc is making a bad concept album. Let us not forget that for every Abbey Road or Dark Side of the Moon there is a Kilroy Was Here or The Life of Chris Gaines. However, it was the pure foolishness of the move that prompted The Vanishing Spies to take the storytelling route. If they were already facing the threat of the Sophomore Slump, why not also confront the peril of the Concept Album? Amazingly, as the final product proves, The Vanishing Spies somehow pulled it off.

The Long Emergency is a mini-masterpiece. It is a concept album which remembers that a concept without great music and lyrics is just a concept, and it is a sophomore disc that so far exceeds the quality and confidence of its strong predecessor that it is difficult to believe it was made by the same band. Each of the album’s 12 tracks is testimony to the subtle power of McNamee’s musicianship and the infectious appeal of Zuccola's lyrics and melodies. The album’s first single, "Hearts and Mines," joins a guitar riff that would do The Hold Steady proud with an anthemic chorus Bob Pollard would envy to tell a tale of the war-torn sands of a foreign land. In another standout track, "Familiar Faces," we are back on the home front in a song that considers how the lives of Americans would change if we were the invaded instead of the invaders. Fortunately, offsetting the heavy subject matter are crunchy guitars and a sing-along melody that recalls the indie rock of Sloan. Then there is "The Sleeping Prophets," a power pop gem made even memorable by its bouncing bass lines and dynamic drumming. Who ever thought a song about the End Times would make you want to hit the dance floor?

Ultimately, these three singles, and the nine radio-worthy keepers that accompany them, demonstrate that ideas which may sound bad on paper, such as writing a sophomore album about this nation’s lust for oil, sometimes come together in surprisingly successful ways. On The Long Emergency, The Vanishing Spies have crafted catchy music for thinking people. Sure, some folks may have said the same thing about Christopher Cross back in ‘81, but there is one key difference: The Vanishing Spies promise to never, ever write the theme song for a Dudley Moore movie. This, of course, would be exceptionally difficult to begin with, especially in light of the fact that Dudley Moore is dead. Then again, that is the exact kind of bad idea that McNamee and Zuccola could probably spin into musical gold, just like they have on The Long Emergency.