The Zincs – Dimmer

Jim Elkington, The Zincs’ British-born mastermind, sounds as if he’s crooning from a hospital bed, where a morphine drip in his arm competes with the pack of Marlboros on the nightstand for his attention. His voice is gruff, lazy and perfectly affected, the aural equivalent of a quarantined hipster hovering between addiction and death. A style that hearkens back to John Cale, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, it’s certainly a refreshing change from the other vocalists fronting indie bands these days. Joined by singer Janet Bean, guitarist Nathaniel Braddock and a host of other musical Chicagoans, Elkington deliriously mumbles his lyrics as the neo-folk instrumentation swells and soars with all the melodrama of a film-noir flick, the lush strings battling against a drumbeat that reverberates like a pistol shot. Late-night coffee drinkers, pale-skinned goth holdovers, Egon Schiele aficionados and jaded cabaret junkies: this is your music. Enjoy.