Album Review: Sling Shot to Heaven by Margot & the Nuclear So and So's

Chicago-based songwriter Richard Edwards and the loosely collected group of his friends making up various incarnations of Margot & the Nuclear So and So's have been bringing his songs to life since 2005, moving from meticulous chamber pop styles into more Americana and blue-collar rock-leaning moods with later albums. Sling Shot to Heaven is the fifth full-length from the band, put to 2" analog tape over a series of months in the group's home studio. As Edwards and the band neared a decade of touring, recording, and prolific output as a hard-working indie rock outfit, themes of adulthood and reflection fill the album, making it a more mature and patient statement than we've heard from the band previously.

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A funny thing happened to Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s on their way to major label acceptance. Their story is common enough for a band of their stature: indie, folk-tinged band gets noticed, major label signing from Epic Records follows, band isn’t happy with major label influence and return to self-releasing subsequent albums through their own label. Margot then, it seems, proceed to do whatever the hell they want to exorcise the bad taste of major label out of their mouths.

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Throughout the past eight years, Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s have quietly (and at times not so quietly) evolved from a chamber-pop group on their debut album The Dust Of Retreat to an indie-rock band on Buzzard and Rot Gut, Domestic. Their fifth album, Sling Shot To Heaven, finds them a band in the middle: somewhere between somber minor-key melodies and heavier, experimental rock. The connecting factor between the songs is the laconic, melancholy spirit Margot have perfected.

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