Success was not always a simple command for Staten Island’s Cymbals Eat Guitars. With the release of their first album Why There Are Mountains the band received bold praise for their indie-punk-rock sound and even went on to play CMJ and Pitchfork. But with their following two albums, the band found themselves in a music rut having little success with them overall (despite having toured with bands like Say Anything and Brand New) and then losing two of its four original members.

But Cymbals kept on, using their displacement and confusion as creativity, found two replacements for their band, kept writing and recording, and then released Pretty Years, their latest record produced by John Congleton (associated with War on Drugs and St. Vincent), which just happened to be their quickest album turnaround yet.

When you listen to the bookends of their discography, there is a definite transformation in the band’s music. The early stuff was a gritty, zero expectation style of punk, while their later material veers into a more mature rock as the band tries to make sense of their past and where things shifted for them as a band, while being inspired by the sounds of Springsteen and incorporating that into their new tracks. “Shrine” exemplifies just that with the lyrics “The present fills and empties, the past alive around me. I’ve got a world of memories just between here and Asbury.” It’s a slower song that celebrates (in a way) the beauty of loneliness, until it explodes with harder emotion (of course) to remind listeners that it’s still the same Cymbals Eats Guitars—just a little bit redefined.

Mercury Lounge

December 30

10:30 p.m.

$20

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