Aberdeen City

Indie-rock quartet Aberdeen City's sound is not particularly unique but perfectly appropriate for a rainy day. The group gained notoriety in Boston with the album The Freezing Atlantic before it was re-released nationwide in 2006. Atlantic is an accurately titled work, featuring instrumentations as big as an iceberg and droning vocals that hint of a vast ocean of despair. Whether slow and dreamy or quick and grand, Aberdeen's songs are almost always tinged with an aura of sadness, and understandably so when considering the group members' pasts. The abridged version involves a sensory-deprivation chamber, a lost patent for Ket-Chip, and a blind dog. If Aberdeen's melancholy sound conjures comparisons to U2 and Morrissey, it is largely owing to producer Steve Lillywhite, who was involved with said artists in the Eighties and Nineties. Aside from all the sentimentals, the group's high-pitched and distorted guitar work often quickens the pace, giving listeners the option to dance or cry.