You ever get that feeling? You know, that nerd feeling? The one that happens when you hit play on a record you were expecting to be decent, only to find out that it's BETTER than decent? The feeling that makes your arm hairs stand on end? The reassuring comfort in knowing that your musical taste is FAR superior to most mere mortals? The DISCOVERY of something sonically brilliant?

It happened to me just now.

Rhode Island's THE BROTHER KITE may have just unleashed the album of the year on us. Their self-titled debut record a couple years back was one of the standout releases on the fledgling Claire label (your home for turtleneck-wearing shoegazing fans who still can't accept that Lush broke up.) Their first album was good; I was expecting the same from the follow-up.

Instead what I got what Brian Wilson reincarnated as the simultaneous frontman of both The House of Love and the Jesus & Mary Chain. The record has enough blissed-out guitar fuzz to make even the most coffee-laden elitists of shoegazers perk up, but that's only the icing on the mocha latte. What makes "Waiting for the Time To Be Right" so different is that it's bursting with pop hooks that explode out of the record straight into that weird part of your brain that can't shake a good song no matter how hard you try. Shoegazers are supposed to be dour creatures who like stretching one guitar chord into lazy infinity -- instead, The Brother Kite cut through the glorious haze with umpteen-part harmonies that make me ancy to rush out and play the record for all my friends.

It's Ride meets the Beach Boys. It's My Bloody Valentine meets Supertramp. It's genius, and I haven't heard anything quite like it. The time IS right.

Don't think, just go order it now from the good folks at Tonevendor.

Click here for The Brother Kite on Myspace.
(and take a listen to "Waiting for the Time"!)