“Knee of the Curve,” the last song on Quiet Giant’s latest release, You’re in Heaven, starts with a shambolic drum and bass groove, loose and spilling over. The guitar comes in with a few bell-like harmonics, and then settles into a descending riff drenched in echo that blazes a path for the vocal.
“What drive took you the farthest?” Danielle Capalbo croons. “Waking up with another song to keep out / You learned it by heart and now you’re in the knee of the curve / you wanna slow down.”
It’s a breakup song, it turns out. But it’s also the kind of big song you might play at full blast in your car with the windows rolled all the way down. It’s a song made for summer.
And it’s not alone. With You’re in Heaven, the New Haven-based Quiet Giant — Capalbo on guitar and vocals, Jared Thompson on drums and vocals, William Touri on guitar, and Mark Almodovar on bass — has made a short album that feels big. The opening track, “Heaven,” starts with a shimmy that just about nods back to New Haven’s doo-wop days before it rockets forward into the present. “Heaven” also shows that Capalbo’s voice has an edge that can more than match the twin guitars when they turn up the volume.
But the album also shows that Quiet Giant set out to make something a little different than a straight-ahead rocker, as each song has its own distinct feel. On “What I Know,” the energy that explodes on “Heaven” and fills space on “Knee of the Curve” stays churning and low to the ground, even on the choruses, turning the pulse into something more like a strut. And “Outta My Head” features the band’s most intricate work, as the two guitars and bass all find lines to play that twine around one another to create a groovy whole.
The liner notes reveal that You’re In Heaven was a studio effort, with the guitars, bass, and vocals recorded at Squirrel’s Nest/Crunch House in West Haven, and drums, percussion, and vocals laid down at Raven Blue Studios in Brookfield. It doesn’t sound like that; it sounds like a band rocking out live. And if this is the sound of their studio project, how much energy might they kick up when they’re all on a stage together, in front of a live audience?
The New Haven area will have a chance to find out in the near future when Quiet Giant plays Crunch House in West Haven on June 23, amid gigs in New London and Middletown. That You’re in Heaven is Quiet Giant’s fourth release, though, suggests that, even in the Elm City’s ever more active music scene, this is band that could leave a big footprint.
